by Laer Carroll
Jane had no time to reflect on their response--not that she would have wasted the time--because the Indian and the Australian leaders entered the conference room and said Hello in English. The Chinese leader and her second were next, speaking accented English. Jane answered them in Mandarin Chinese and asked the health of their families. She knew both of them well enough for such a query having stayed with them as a guest for a few days two years ago.
The two Argentines were last by a few minutes. Jane immediately straightened up and spoke in English.
"One phase of our task has ended. We now begin the second: waiting on the results. Rather than do nothing I believe it is time to prepare for what we will learn. I have no doubt that will be that a predator alien military is on its way. I even believe I know who they are. Or more correctly what they are."
"How can you know this?" said Okafor. Though Adebayo was his boss he was the most talkative, Adbayo talking little if at all.
"I've made a detailed study of the Galactic Encyclopedia part on space-based predators. You'll find in your In Box a summary with links to the Encyclopedia."
Images appeared on the virtual conference room's large wall view screen. It showed two rows of alien beings, four above and three below.
"There are four likely predators and three unlikely ones. The least likely is this one."
One of the images expanded to fill the view screen. It showed an insectile figure wearing grey body armor.
"Their attack style is too aggressive to fit what the sentinels are seeing. Besides the Confederation has been waging a campaign of extermination of this species for centuries, burning down to bedrock any planet harboring this life form. After trying to reform the species they decided it was impossible."
The figure shrank back to it original size and became translucent. She took up the two beside it and dealt with them.
Finishing the bottom row she began on the top row. Each was dismissed for some reason, such as only attacking planets much colder or hotter. Finally there were two. One was was also insectile and green but was much thinner and taller. The other resembled blue frogs.
"The Greens are more aggressive than the Blues but have been known to restrain themselves, so it's a tossup which is coming for us. I'd guess--and it's just a guess--that we'll face off against the Frogs."
"Why," said the Russian Colonel, Voronin, "do so many aliens look like Earth animals?"
The Chinese, Syah, said, "No one knows why there are analogs among all the sentients, which I find remarkable given that the biologists of the advanced species are thousands of years further along than we are."
"Except maybe," said Okafor, "those of the Hive Minds. But they don't talk to the rest of us much." The thousand-fold planets and systems of the Hive Minds had existed for at least a million years. They were acknowledged to be the most advanced of the thirteen very advanced species. At least those species who inhabited the surfaces of solid planets. The Floaters of the gas giant planets were more advanced still.
Two more hours passed while the leaders of the Earth Defense Forces discussed strategies to handle the possible invasion of alien predators. Finally at 1:00 am her time Jane called the meeting closed, assigning several action items to the various offices represented.
<>
For several months plans were hashed out to build an Earth defense force with contributions from all the nations of the Earth, the bigger and richer ones larger contributions. The citizens of the various nations were never happy about how much they were to give but slowly the plans were approved.
Jane thought that eventually an effective force would come together and a workable command structure devised. Yet she was unhappy at how slowly the process was working. Their enemies might accelerate the pace of their invasion and catch Earth unready.
She called a meeting with her boss, General Willoughby. At it she laid out her concerns.
"I believe I need to go looking for the Guardian or Guardians the Encyclopedias claim protect each Confederation system and call their attention to our need."
"That would interfere with my plans for you. I've been laying the groundwork for you to be the Supreme Commander of the Earth Defense Forces."
Jane frowned. "Me? I lack the seniority. And the status."
"There are ways around the issue of seniority. And as for status-- You're widely acknowledged to be the person who has done the most to take the human race fully into space. More importantly, you've the most experience with aliens. You'd be better able to understand the psychology and tactics of the enemy."
"By the time the Defense Forces are set up the more senior military leaders will be up to speed on the enemy's strategy and tactics."
"Maybe. If so I'll choose from one of them. But for the time being you're it, Kuznetsov."
Jane had no choice but to agree. However, she decided to groom someone, or several someones, to be the Supreme Commander. She was barely into her thirties, damnit. The top boss should be someone in their forties or fifties. And probably a man; despite all the progress feminism had made male military officers more often inspired troops.
<>
Within a year a drone discovered an alien intruder. It sent via hypercom a fuzzy image from a couple of million miles away, then drifted closer, to any observer a six-foot long dully grey rock shaped like a potato. Closer approaches revealed more details until the drone drifted out of the neighborhood of the spaceship.
Even the first glimpse was detailed enough to show a two-thousand foot cylindrical framework. Inside it were two-hundred-foot cubes like dice with very rounded edges. This was a standard configuration of the spaceships of the Frogs.
Sightings of further vehicles showed similar vehicles. The smallest were a hundred feet long. These were accompanied by a swarm of rocks of various sizes.
Jane said in one of the meetings, "This is typical, say the Encyclopedias, of a standard tactic of the Frogs. And other predators for that matter. This is to bombard a victim planet with rocks to wreck its economies and make the planet easier to exploit."
"Meaning," said the Russian, Voronin, "that we've got to destroy these craft before they launch an attack. I don't see how we can intercept thousands of rocks coming in at high velocities."
Jane nodded.
Another vehicle was some 400 feet long. These were identified as missile carriers. Vehicles about half again that size contained laser projectors. A single mile-long vehicle carried the harvester personnel who landed on the ground and salvaged useful technology and captured people to enslave.
All the vehicles were millions of miles apart. Still, over several months the Defense Force catalogued what it thought was the entirety of the alien fleet. Including one three-mile long by two-mile wide space craft that Jane and her Frog experts thought carried the families of most of the Frogs of the invasion fleet.
<>
Jane got an appointment with her boss for a short conference.
After they'd exchanged courtesies Jane put two envelopes on General Willoughby's desk then took the seat the general indicated in front of her desk.
Willoughby eyed the envelopes then Jane, eyebrows raised.
"One is a list of five officers I believe would be as good or better than me to act as Supreme Commander. My personal preference is a Russian named Voronin, but it's only a guess that he'd be better.
"The second is a proposal for a trip through the subspace gates near Saturn to go looking for the Guardian assigned to the Confederation Zone in which Earth lies. Or anyone who'd be willing to come help us take care of the alien invasion."
"I can see you've got a bee in your bonnet about this, Kuznetsov. Why is that?"
"I've covered that in my proposal. But the short of it is that I'm the best person to deal with alien technologies and an alien society."
"I've seen that stubborn look on your face once before. I'd guess it means you're determined to do this even if you have to resign and finance the trip yourself."
Willoughby sig
hed. "You're such a pain in the ass sometimes, Kuznetsov. I'll look into your proposals and get back to you within the week. Now get out of here and leave me with my fantasy that I'm the boss here."
Jane got.
Chapter 15 - Beyond Saturn
It took three months to modify a hundred foot long SuperScout for Jane's trip. The biggest change was to add a second antimatter power generator. Almost as important were facilities for an extra long voyage, chiefly a 3D food printer and several tons of basic foodstock. The printer would turn out food and drink which contained everything needed to keep her healthy. Its programming included the ability to copy any of a huge library of dishes. She could also modify the recipes to get additional variety.
Phil contributed a library of movies which supposedly contained a digitally enhanced version of every movie ever made back to the very oldest.
She herself added a vast music library and a complete music studio so that she could compose music and play her compositions.
Goodbyes took a full week. Finally Jane returned to Colorado Springs to her long-stay hotel room. She'd been living there since she'd vacated her home on the hill. She'd sublet it since she might be gone several months, possibly even a year or two if she could not soon make contact with a Confederation Guardian.
She packed up a few items, had a good night's sleep, then had a nice banquet style breakfast at the hotel.
Leaving the hotel lobby for the automated Flyt limousine she found that the week-long spring snowstorm had been swept away overnight by a cold front. Snow was still stacked high against buildings and automobiles and other structures but the day was bright and clear.
As the limo pulled away Jane sent a message to the SuperScout waiting for her at Peterson Air Base which she'd named FarReach. It answered back that it was going from Standby to Full Online.
It was a short trip to the long line of hangars on the south side of the base which abutted an east-west access runway on the north side of the Colorado Springs Airport.
The limo pulled up in front of the middle hangar of a couple of dozen. As it did so the hangar's two big front doors began to slide away to each side. Before they could open all the way the nose of FarReach began to emerge from the hangar.
Jane spared only a glance at the spacecraft as she left the limo and lifted out her two pieces of luggage. One was a standard overhead-sized pull-along suitcase. The other was a leather-bound suitcase of similar size but without the wheels and handle of a pull-along suitcase.
Inside it were dozens of paperbound books. Each was in near-new condition but had at least some small flaws caused by usage. The Cat captain Elizabeth had suggested Jane bring these books as gifts to people who might help her in her search for a Guardian. In societies where almost anything could be created out of air and earth by transmutation these authentic "made" items were worth a fortune.
Moreover they were books containing stories made without any help from story-writing AIs. That added value upon value.
Each one Jane had read sometime in the fifteen years or so since she'd woken up naked on the lawn of a park. All of them she'd enjoyed and all were well-written in her opinion. That added yet more value still.
The limo whirred away and Jane took up her luggage and began to walk toward FarReach.
By now it had floated fully out of the hangar. The hangar doors began to slowly close.
The spacecraft was a hundred feet long and about the shape of a midsize passenger aerospace jet, a very fat one. It lacked wings and tails and windows of any size or kind. There were no protrusions to spoil its passage through air at several times the speed of sound.
An invisible door opened in the nearest side, rotating down till it formed a stairway not quite touching the concrete. Handrails folded up to waist height on each side.
Jane walked up the stairs, both hands filled with suitcase handles. She did not need the handrails, being over a dozen times as strong and agile as ordinary humans.
As she passed into FarReach the stairs behind her folded back into the vehicle. Closed, it sealed firmly to the body of the spacecraft, as solidly a part of the body as any other part. It would take a nuclear bomb or a laser weapon to breach that hull.
Jane stowed the two suitcases and packed away her winter clothing and boots. This left her barefoot but in a sense not unshod. Her feet and their skin, like all her skin, were much tougher than ordinary human flesh though to the touch no one could have told that. Her only clothing was an armless blue tee-shirt and gold form-fitting shorts.
Even those were unnecessary. In the last few years Robot's protective force field had grown to full capacity. Jane in essence wore an invisible spacesuit with the ability to fly built into it.
She walked forward, seated herself in one of the two pilot seats, and merged with Robot.
The first few hundred milliseconds SHE looked within HERself. All was well with HER biological and machine parts.
Then SHE viewed/sensed her surroundings. For a few milliseconds SHE restrained HERself from merging with all the electronics around HER even as SHE examined them and whatever they were part of.
SHE looked up as well as out. SHE made note of the locations and paths of all the aircraft in the air out, then further out, till SHE saw/sensed everything up to and into nearby space.
The cyborg contacted the control tower of the nearby airport, identified herself and her craft, and checked that the flight plan she'd filed during breakfast was still current.
"You are go for takeoff, Spacecraft FarReach. Wait five. Two aircraft are close to your path."
"Colorado Springs Control, wait five, wait five."
It was only a couple of minutes before JANE got the go-ahead.
"Colorado Springs Control, lifting now. Have a good day."
"FarReach, General Kuznetsov, good hunting. May we see you back soon."
"Thank you."
Few people knew Jane was leaving the Solar System and fewer knew why. But everyone who cared knew she spent much of her time in space. Certainly the air traffic control personnel and the air base maintenance people knew when she was traveling.
She also had no doubt that the several group of international spies scattered around the base and airport knew when she left the planet.
The superbeing turned HER attention to the trip at hand.
SHE brought the two antimatter power generators up to 99% capacity for a few hundred milliseconds. As they had dozens of time before they worked perfectly. SHE brought them down to 10%, all that was needed to keep HER body working well.
SHE looked/sensed upward and outward. There before HER was HER path, a faint green line in HER visual sensorium.
SHE tensed HER metaphorical legs and leaped upward. Like a wrong-way meteor SHE arrowed skyward.
<>
At a hundred miles height the cyborg spaceship was effectively in space though there were still just enough stray air molecules to slow down anything from orbit speed within a few years. The emptiness was enough to enter hyperspace safely. SHE jumped toward the queen planet Saturn. A few milliseconds was enough to take HER six million miles further from the sun.
Examining the objects near HER (the Earth and the Moon) confirmed that SHE was actually where SHE'd planned to be, so SHE made another jump. Ten seconds took HER a quarter of the way toward the orbit of Mars.
With no convenient planet nearby SHE took sightings of the sun and stars to confirm the accuracy of HER flight path. Still on track SHE jumped again, a longer one this time that took her past Mars' orbit by quite some distance.
For several hours JANE took longer and longer jumps till SHE ended up near Saturn. In between jumps SHE accelerated at an angle to HER flight path so that HER speed and direction matched that of what Saturn's would be. Thus when SHE quit traveling faster than light SHE floated seemingly motionless 50 million miles from the planet.
This was in accord with advice from the Cat captain Elizabeth and the Lizard captain Jorel with whom she'd had several long conv
ersations in recent months. She'd wanted to know what to expect and how to behave when she approached Saturn. She was told that she needed to ask permission to travel within the subspace transportation network established by an unknown species many millions of years ago.
"How do I contact the manager of the network?" Jane had asked.
"You don't. It will contact you. Just proceed slowly toward the planet. It will have seen you coming from at least Jupiter's orbit."
That idea had been a bit intimidating: that some super intelligence would be examining her and judging her.
The feeling faded as SHE came nearer Saturn and it grew from a tiny marble to fill nearly a quarter of the virtual window through which HER biological part saw the planet.
As when SHE'd neared Jupiter SHE was approaching from behind in Saturn's orbit and north of the planet, the same north shared by Earth. So SHE saw Saturn with one half lit by the Sun and the other half dark, lit only by very dim star shine. The rings extended several planetary diameters to each side, to the left and right with HER current orientation.
The small orange ball of Titan was easily visible. Shortly HER eyes picked out a few of the other smaller moons. SHE knew where to look as HER gravitic senses had instantly "seen" them.
A voice spoke.
GUARDIAN.
The sound came to HER not through HER biological ears but from inside HER biological head. It gave the impression of being very loud but this was an illusion. Instead it seemed as if it came from something as huge as a mountain.
As Jane had been advised SHE answered back.
Guardian of the Gates. I desire to travel to the nearest in time to a planet where I can contact the representatives of the Human Interstellar Confederation.
SPECIFY TIME LIMITS. THERE ARE TWO TIMES FOR TRAVELLERS. TIME WITHIN THE TUNNEL. TIME OUTSIDE THE TUNNEL.
Jane knew what it meant. It could take a week to get somewhere but inside each subspace tunnel time ran slower. A traveler might experience only a day.
