“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Nolan said, a little embarrassed to find his voice raspy with emotion.
Tiona continued, “You could head home with the professor, you know. No need to risk your life in this crazy…”
Nolan reached out to interrupt by putting his hand on hers. “Tiona, this is the, the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. Probably the most exciting thing I’ll ever do. And, and… I don’t know how to say this… you’re the most amazing person I know and I keep getting kinda tongue-tied around you. Getting to do something this exciting with you… I just can’t put it into words…” to his great embarrassment his voice broke.
Tiona stared at him for a wordless minute; then she shook herself and said “Okay… um, I’m thinking we should try to get some sleep. Sophie’s going to get back here in the middle of the night and we’ll need to be awake to fly out to our launch point.” Tiona started reclining her seat back
“Uh, sure. Where are you thinking we should launch from?” Nolan said, feeling both relieved and terribly disappointed that Tiona hadn’t responded to his little confession.
“I’m thinking somewhere just north of Honduras. Maybe General Harding will never know we visited Texas.”
***
Sophie and her uncle arrived back at the docks in Galveston at a little after midnight. He waited while she tossed some rocks into the water over the saucer and waited for it to rise. When it had come up to the level of the seawall she stepped out onto the deck where Marlowe held the door open for her. Once she’d passed in her space suit, a bag of groceries, and a small overnight bag, she turned and waved back at her uncle. Eisner got back in her car for the long drive back to North Carolina.
Sophie bent to go through the door and found Marlowe pushing her suit into a cubby. Then he latched both doors of the air lock.
Sophie looked at Marlowe and held up her little overnight bag “Where should I put this?”
He showed her another, empty storage cubby and she dropped it in. She moved up to the “shotgun” seat in the crouch required by the low ceiling of the saucer. Dropping into the seat she turned and looked at Tiona. “Are we ready to go?”
Tiona nodded, and pushed forward on a large joystick between their seats. A higher pitched hum joined the low pitched thrumming of the saucer and it started sliding gently forward over the water of the bay.
Sophie raised an eyebrow at Tiona saying, “This spaceship is flown with hand controllers?”
Tiona shrugged, “No, the AI can fly it better than I can on GPS with IR laser ranging and low powered radar to keep it from hitting other boats. But I’m keeping the IR and radar off line right now so they don’t light up someone’s sensors and get people asking questions. I’m hoping that if anyone sees us here in the dark they’ll just think we’re someone’s personal watercraft.”
“So you’ve got no collision avoidance going?”
“Just these,” she said, pointing at her eyes.
Somewhat aghast that someone would drive around manually, Sophie asked, “Is this how you came into the bay too?”
“No, we came in underwater in the daytime so we could see the hulls of boats above us. At night we could run into one underwater.”
Sophie managed to stay awake until they were a couple of miles out of the harbor and rose into the air to begin imitating a small plane. Other than a slightly louder thrumming, the saucer made it seem effortless. For a little longer she watched the lights of boats beneath her; then she fell asleep.
Sophie woke again when her seat started reclining to flat, “Wha…” she said muzzily.
“We’re about to go up to space. We shouldn’t have to accelerate too hard but if Harding’s got some assets near here and they start shooting, I want to be able to pile it on.”
***
Riker was asleep on a cot in Harding’s command center. The NCO’s were rotating out to bunks for rest, but Harding had had cots brought in for the officers so “he wouldn’t have to bring other junior officers up to speed.”
Riker suspected that Harding just didn’t want to have any more people know what was going on. It didn’t seem to Riker that this operation would be condoned by the upper reaches of command if they knew about it. He really wanted to do some net searches on the legality of military actions involving civilians, but feared that the NSA guys were screening for any net activity originating from this room that wasn’t related to carrying out the mission. He pretended to sleep, even though he actually couldn’t for worrying.
When the excitement started again Riker had just drifted off. Muzzily, he came to. Harding was shouting and others speaking excitedly. He rubbed his eyes and made his way to the radar section he nominally commanded, “What’s going on?”
The NCO glanced up at him. “The damned saucer’s going up again,” he pointed at the screen. “From just north of Honduras.”
Riker saw a blinking red icon there, “How high is it?”
“Passing 20,000 feet.”
His heart thumping, Riker asked, “Any assets nearby?”
To Riker’s great relief the NCO shook his head. Riker looked over at Harding. With dismay he realized that the man was bent over the ASAT desks. Oh man, by now those guys will have figured out how to shoot down a stationary object in space!
As Riker stood, staring at the ASAT section and trying to gather the courage to go over and formally protest, all the screens at the ASAT desks suddenly went blank. A small message popped up in the corner of each screen but it was too far away for Riker to read.
Harding had begun shouting and then turned to vehemently beckon the people from the NSA desks.
Riker took a halting step in that direction; then paused. A moment later he resumed, striding over like he belonged. His eyes went to the corner of the closest screen. Displayed on it were the words, “Firing on a civilian craft that poses no threat is illegal.”
Riker had frozen in place, his eyebrows up when Harding’s eyes swept the room and saw him there. “Riker! What the hell are you doing over here?!”
His face stiff, Riker drew himself to attention. “Sir, I came over to see what the commotion was.” He glanced at the screen; then pointed a finger at it. “I agree with what’s on the screen Sir. I hope you do too.”
Harding’s face had drawn up into a rictus of fury, “Guards, arrest this man!” he said, his finger coming up to point at Riker.
Riker felt a great calm come over him. “On what charge Sir?”
“Treason! Treason in the face of a national emergency!”
To his own astonishment Riker heard himself speak, steadily and forcefully in a voice loud enough to carry the room. “Sir, to the best of our knowledge, some of our country’s citizens have invented a personal spacecraft. That’s not a national emergency, Sir. It’s a national treasure, and it’s our duty to protect those citizens, not threaten them.”
***
Sophie lay in her acceleration couch, weighing, she estimated, twice normal. One G of weight and one G of acceleration she thought. It didn’t last long, then it decreased to just a little more than her normal weight. “Why did the acceleration drop off?” she asked, a little worried that something had failed.
Gettnor said, “Staying below the speed of sound. Pushing this disk through the sound barrier wideways causes a lot of violent shaking.”
“Wideways?”
Gettnor grinned and shrugged, “Can’t think of a better term. We aren’t going through the air like a Frisbee. We’re going ninety degrees to our best aerodynamic shape because that’s the direction our big thruster pushes. Terrible shape for the sound barrier.”
“Oh,” Sophie said, considering the mechanics of the situation. Soon the stars overhead brightened and stopped twinkling. More and more of them appeared, and then they pivoted across the windows. “We’re changing course?”
Gettnor murmured to her AI; then looked up at Sophie. “Yes,” she said, “the AI is redirecting our trajectory toward the point in space w
here Kadoma will be when we arrive.
Gettnor looked at Sophie, then back over her shoulder at Marlowe, “It’s going to be about four hours to turnover. That’ll be about breakfast time. I suggest we get some sleep until then and eat after turnover.”
“OK,” Sophie said, leaving her seat reclined and wondering if she’d be able to sleep. I’m in space! she thought. She might be labeled an “astronaut” since she’d completed training, but she’d never been selected for a mission before. A lot of astronauts never were.
***
Riker sat in handcuffs out in the anteroom of Harding’s command center. When the general had him arrested, he’d expected to be taken to the post lock-up. He’d wondered how long it would take the military to assign him some legal representation. Somehow, he’d doubted that it would be in time for him to get the lawyer to do anything for the people in that saucer.
The MP that Harding had told to arrest Riker had put handcuffs on him and moved him to the back of the room away from the general, but then held him there, apparently waiting to be told where to take Riker. Harding had been highly distracted. First screaming at the NSA people for failing to block whoever had taken over the computer system. Then screaming at the ASAT section to reboot their computers.
While the ASAT computers were rebooting, the message about the illegality of firing on a civilian craft began popping up across the top of every screen in the room! Riker found it very hard to believe that someone on the outside could have overcome all the firewalls and NSA protection in that room so he looked carefully from computer to computer, wondering if he could figure out who was doing it from the inside.
As he looked at his own section he saw with some relief that the saucer had reached space. He’d continued tracking around the room trying to figure out who was hacking them. The NSA guys were the ones who likely had the programming chops. Riker noticed that the banner about the illegality of Harding’s actions was up across their screens as well. They all seemed frantic, but Riker had the impression they were trying to fix the problem, not causing it.
The next time Riker got back to looking at his own radar section a schematic was up on one of the screens that showed the saucer breaking orbit! Where are they going? The moon? With some relief he realized that the spacecraft was now well beyond attack by any ASAT systems as well.
Eventually, Harding realized that the saucer was out of reach as well. He addressed the room, “They’ve escaped for now, but they’re going to have to come back to Earth sometime. By the time they get here, I expect you guys to have blocked whoever’s hacking us and be ready to attack if they won’t listen to reason.
“Some of you are probably wondering whether that banner is correct. Yes, it is true that international law bans us from attacking civilians. However, it does not ban us from attacking terrorists or other threats to our country. That alien craft, and the technology it represents, poses an enormous danger to the United States of America. It is our duty, our most patriotic duty, to either bring it under control or eliminate it as a threat. Rest assured that I would not issue an illegal order to a man under my command.”
For a moment, Riker doubted himself. Like many general officers Harding had powerful charisma. But then Riker thought of the ordinary appearing construction of the saucer. He steeled his resolve, That’s not alien technology! We’d need a lot more evidence than we have to convince me that a professor, his grad students and their invention are a threat to these United States!
Shortly after that, Harding had noticed Riker with the MP at the back of the room. He stalked back to them and leaned his face in close to Riker, “I’m not just going to break you Riker, I’m going to send you to prison.” He turned to the MP, “Keep him in the cuffs and hold him just outside. I don’t want him blathering about.”
Since then Riker and his MP had been sitting outside Harding’s command center. At first Riker had been so upset he’d been practically shaking. However, when the reaction wore off, Riker’s drained emotional state and the exhaustion of the long day left him sleeping, leaned back against the wall in his chair.
He woke when the other door to the anteroom opened. He cracked an eye to see who it was, then came to his feet when he saw three stars on the man’s shoulder. More officers crowded the door behind him.
The lieutenant general dubiously eyed Riker and his handcuffs. “Why are you under arrest Major?”
Riker quickly glanced down at the general’s name tag and said, “General Cooper, Sir, I protested General Harding’s actions as I believe them to be illegal. He has sequestered me so that I will not interfere with operations.”
The general frowned, then lifted his chin interrogatively toward Harding’s command center and said, “What’s going on in there? My staff and I were all awakened by our AIs and found messages on our HUDs telling us that some kind of illegal military activity was going on here.”
Holy crap, Riker thought, our hacker’s fingers apparently extend far beyond the command center! To General Cooper, he said, “Sir, I was the NORAD officer on duty when the spacecraft lifted from Raleigh two nights ago. General Harding co-opted me to his team so I was present when it launched again from Raleigh last night and again from the Caribbean tonight. It appears to me that only civilians, consisting of a college professor and two of his grad students, are on board. I objected to the fact that General Harding had Sidewinder missiles fired at them. Those civilians had done nothing to suggest that they posed a threat.”
During Riker’s little speech Cooper’s eyebrows had rapidly ascended. “A spacecraft?! Launched from Raleigh?! Why the hell haven’t I heard about this?!”
Aha, Riker thought, I thought Harding seemed like the kind to hide something like this from higher command! “Sir, I sent what information we had up the chain of command two nights ago when it first happened. General Harding arrived very shortly after that and took control of everything to do with the situation from that point on. I had, of course, believed that he was keeping the upper levels of command informed.”
Cooper’s eyes bored into Riker’s for a moment; then he gave a sharp nod and stepped over to the door of the command center. Opening it only to shoulder width he said forcefully, “General Harding. A word please.” He stood there long enough to let Harding see his stars, then let the door slowly close itself.
A minute later, the door opened and Harding stood in the opening. His eyes flashed around the room at Cooper and the jumble of officers behind him. Then he focused on Riker. Eyes still on Riker, he addressed his words to the general, “Did the major somehow send you an alarming message Coop?” He turned his eyes to Cooper, “I apologize for not keeping a better watch on him.” Harding’s eyes flickered angrily to the MP, then back to Cooper.
Cooper, eyes narrowed, said, “No Alonzo, the major didn’t notify me. My AI, and apparently the AI of everyone on my staff, woke us all up with a message that something illegal was happening here. Since I didn’t know anything was happening here, I decided I’d better come over and find out for myself.” He arched an eyebrow, “While I was driving over here, I got a call from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Apparently the Secretary of Defense and the President got similar messages through their AIs. Now, I’ve been hoping all the way here that maybe, just maybe, some idiot teenager hacked our system and sent those messages. That would be bad, but I must say not as bad as having Major Riker here tell me we’ve been firing Sidewinders at civilian craft over the state of North Carolina!”
Red with fury, Harding grated, “Don’t listen to that son of a bitch! I can tell you…”
Cooper put a hand up and interrupted, “Don’t tell me that, tell me this. Did we, in fact, fire Sidewinders at a civilian craft over Raleigh North Carolina?”
Harding nodded, saying, “But…”
Cooper’s hand halted him again, “And this happened last night?!”
“Yes and…”
Cooper shook his head, “And I haven’t heard about it until now because…?”
&n
bsp; “I’ve been waiting to settle…”
Cooper shook his head again, this time mournfully. He reached out and put a hand on Harding’s shoulder, “Al, I’ve been telling you for quite some time that you aren’t nearly as shit-hot as you think you are. Your dick surely doesn’t reach the floor like you imagine it does,” Cooper snorted sadly, “but you have managed to step on it this time.”
Cooper had Riker’s handcuffs removed and then he, Harding, and all of his staff officers moved out into Harding’s command center. Over the next couple of hours, he brought himself up to speed. He listened to Harding’s protests when they were brief, but cut him off when they were vitriolic. He relied on the NCOs and other officers, but paid more and more attention to Riker’s assessment of the situation.
At 0630 hours, looking very depressed, he called the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from a corner of the room. Shortly after that Cooper removed Harding’s stars and had him escorted from the room in cuffs by one of the MPs.
The last thing Harding did as he left the room was to shoot Riker a glance that looked like it had been intended to flay skin.
***
Sophie woke suddenly on hearing the AI’s voice, “Acceleration will now decrease for turnover.”
The thrumming sound of the thrusters dropped off and the force holding her in her chair smoothly diminished until she felt like she was falling. She’d felt the sensation before in the “Vomit Comet,” but this felt more real somehow. For one thing there was none of the noise and vibration of a big plane going through the atmosphere. Just silence…
A gentle humming sound came on as the saucer started pivoting around. Stars moved over the canopy and Sophie’s straps tugged gently at her.
“Acceleration resuming,” the AI said. The thrumming started back up and soon Sophie felt like she was back at her normal weight.
Tiona_a sequel to Vaz Page 26
