Ascendancy: A Near Future Sci-Fi Thriller

by Randal Sloan

  “That was amazing,” Julie began and the others all chimed in agreement. She turned to Zeke. “I just saw our daughter from the future and she is so beautiful and brilliant. She has the best of you and the best of me, I think.”

  “And apparently an increased ability to get into trouble. I’m supposed to tell you to not be too mad at her, whatever that means. Yes, I saw her in my vision too.” Zeke was still stunned at the difficulty of his task, but he was thrilled at seeing her.

  “I saw my mother,” Xiu said. “I haven’t seen her since I was six. She sang the lullaby that she used to sing to me as a child.”

  “I saw my ex-wife, who I also haven’t seen in over two years.” The Professor told them regarding his experience. He didn’t go into any detail, but he looked a little sad.

  “And I suspect each of us has been given a task, which apparently we aren’t able to tell anyone else what it entails.” Julie summed up for them all, receiving nods from everyone. “And I really can’t because I just tried it and my brain refuses any attempt at communicating it.”

  “Yeah, she told me that too,” Zeke replied. And he went on silently to Julie, “And you can’t pick it out of my brain either. Hah!”

  “My daughter did give me some details which I can explain to you. They may help you understand what’s happening. This obelisk has been put here by a group of people from our future who are apparently able to communicate across time. I don’t know any details on how they can do that, or who else is involved in this. Apparently they are fighting what she called a ‘temporal war’ and it also appears that we are right in the middle of it. Our tasks we have been assigned are part of the war and apparently the Organization has been working for the other side. So I have no problem agreeing with what we’re asked to do if it opposes them.”

  “The time from which our daughter appeared was from a number of years in the future, but I suspect the other two were other time periods. Amazing technology, but what a horrible way to have to fight a war.”

  While they were talking, the obelisk had gone completely inactive. “My vote is we tell everyone else that this was a false alarm,” Zeke said to the group. “They probably wouldn’t believe us anyway if we tried to tell them, but I don’t want them thinking we’re crazy. Or someone coming out here that shouldn’t in the future.”

  Everyone agreed with Zeke’s sentiment. For all the reasons he had given, and it just felt right to each of them.

  Julie turned the ship around, headed back for a rendezvous with the main ship. No one spoke during the return trip, each contemplating their vision with a smile for the person that they had the opportunity to see, even James. But each also was a little somber at the thought of the task they had to complete.

  None of them were more somber than Zeke. He had a lot to figure out.

  #

  After returning to the main ship, the four of them watched as the ship worked on the process of laying out the search grid. They also pointedly avoided looking back toward the obelisk. After watching a few minutes, Zeke said to Julie, “I’ve been thinking about this ship. At the speeds we’ve been traveling we could be at risk for even a small meteorite to cause serious damage. I believe we should add our shields to this ship too.”

  Julie tried looking at Zeke’s thoughts and got a blank. Sometimes he was just too much like his sister. But whatever he was up to, the idea did make sense. They probably had the equipment on board to do it now and everyone was already getting bored while they waited for the very tedious job of mapping out the search grid to be completed. So why not? She knew later she would have to try to figure out what he was up to.

  “That’s a great idea. We can work on it now so we have something else to do.” Julie gave Zeke a glare, “That is, if you will tune the fields. I don’t want to even think about what the math would take.”

  “But of course. I live to serve.”

  So while the ship continued back and forth across the area, everyone that could worked on the shields. After their experience with the corvettes, the tasks weren’t that difficult. Zeke did insist on using the biggest power systems and field generators they had in the ship’s stores. He told Julie, “This ship should be able to handle them. You never know, we might run into a pirate someday. Wouldn’t he be in for a surprise?”

  Julie gave him another questioning look, but when she got nothing, she agreed. “Sure, why not? It’s not like it really costs us anything.” But she gave him her “You’ll pay me later!” glare. “When this is all over, I’m going to be expecting some answers.”

  “You’ve got it!”

  Zeke was able to quickly do the tuning on the fields. Julie swore he was getting better and better at it. She thought the configuration looked a little odd, but it actually seemed to work better than she expected. She had already sent word back to Space Tech station for them to start the work to implement the same design on the station. If Zeke’s plan worked, they probably wouldn’t need it, but after that last attack, she wanted them protected as much as possible.

  They completed the work for the shields just before the search grid was completed. Having returned to the control room, Zeke turned to Julie. “I want to try the controls once more. I want to see what running this thing at full speed looks like now that we’ve got the shields up.”

  “Go for it. Think this hunk of bolts could outrun me and my corvette?”

  “Not for the short haul, no. But for the long haul? Yes.”

  #

  Shortly thereafter, the last beacon was deployed and the entire grid tested to be sure it was working. Getting the all clear, Zeke took over control of the ship. He keyed the mike. “Everyone, please strap in and prepare for acceleration. We’re going to see what this ship can do.”

  At the appointed time, he hit the engage button to his preprogrammed course and off they went. Despite the inherent cancellation effect Julie’s design of the engines had on inertia, they still felt it. The ship went from a complete stop to full speed in a matter of seconds. Julie was quite impressed. She could have done it with her corvette but not much faster. She got a pretty good idea how her future daughter was going to win that space race.

  After a little while of traveling like that, Zeke turned to Julie. “I’m going to go directly to the drive field units and tune them there. I think I can get a little more out of them. You take over the controls.”

  It didn’t take very long. When he was done, Zeke had etched another five percent out of the engines. Julie just stared. One more thing he now could do better then her. As if he was sensing her thoughts, Zeke told her, “Don’t worry, love. You’re still the best in my book. Plus, flying your corvette? No one can come close to touching you.”

  That brought something else to Julie’s mind. “You’re right.” She gave him a smile. “Which is why I need to be the one who’s flying my corvette against the pirates. Not you!”

  Zeke looked at her thoughtfully, as if he wanted to take back what he’d just said. Finally he gave her a big smile. “Snagged in my own fishing line. But I don’t have to like it, do I? When we get back, let’s go talk to Joe and see what he thinks. But,” he told her. “Only if I can be in this big baby, ready to swoop in if I need to.”

  “Sure,” Julie told him. “I think you actually fly this freak better than I do anyway. But you can’t be too close or they won’t take the bait.”

  “Yeah,” Zeke told her. “I know that. Not happy about it, but I know.”

  Zeke was actually glad that he couldn’t tell Julie his task, because for once she had done exactly what he needed her to do. But if she knew, she would stop him no matter that it was his task. Based on how his daughter had him tweak the fields in the shields even more, and her comments about him needing to survive, he suspected this one was going to be a really close call. No way was he going to let Julie be in there, just in case.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Big Changes

  Zeke was really worried about the upcoming battle. With the informat
ion he had been given about the illegal weapon, he was worried about not only himself but also Julie. Knowing the pirates had nukes, if his ship didn’t survive, he couldn’t move in to help her. The shields should somewhat neutralize the advantage to the pirates, but he worried that she could still be overwhelmed. He had to figure out a way to survive for both their sakes.

  The more Zeke thought about the illegal weapon, the more he thought about what they had done to produce it. He thought he could actually build it, but he wasn’t sure if he should. He finally decided that once the Organization used the weapon, it would be impossible to hide it anyway. Plus, he wanted to see how well the shields worked against it in the lab, because he thought he could tweak them just a little more.

  Which brought Zeke to where he was now. On their return, they had stopped at R4 because that was the best place to finish all the work on the corvettes and the big ship. Julie had made good progress on the design and testing of the plasma gun and it looked like it would be ready the next day for the big ship. She had submitted the parts order for the smaller version for the corvette, but that was going to take a little longer. Zeke didn’t think she would be able to wait on it to be ready before they went after the pirates; just another reason he was worried about her part of the battle.

  Zeke waited until he knew Julie was tied up on a VR call to the Space Tech design group to quietly sneak off to the weapons testing lab. He set up two isolation cubes and doubled the protection levels on them just to be sure. In one he set up with the initial shield settings and the other with his tweak. He then set up in both isolation cubes a power unit and field generator to generate an asymmetric field with the field concentrating to a point that terminated at the point of the test shields. Just to be absolutely sure, he added an AI to control everything, telling it to allow only a one percent tolerance and if that was exceeded, abort the whole thing.

  Wishing he could get Julie there to check everything over but knowing he couldn’t do it this time, he double-checked on her status. “Still busy on the VR call and a long way away. Good. Ok, have I done anything stupid? Besides setting up a test explosive device, one that I really wish no one would ever know about? One that should generate a big boom?”

  For a final failsafe, Zeke turned on the remote viewer to the lab, double-checked that no one was in the lab area and went to the lab unit next door. Each lab was designed to be isolated from the others and he had deliberately chosen to test in the one furthest out from the rest of the labs. Sighing, he hit the Go button.

  Zeke had been expecting fireworks, but he got a lot more than he bargained for. All the labs at his end of the complex lost power. The explosion produced in both test chambers was many times more than he’d expected and couldn’t be contained by the isolation units, which both failed. The AI had already trigged the shutdown, but it was too late to save the lab. Whoops! Guess I’m not going to hide it from Julie after all, Zeke sighed. At least the power came back on in his lab section.

  About that time Zeke got a somewhat frantic mental call, “Zeke! What did you do?”

  Somewhat sheepishly, Zeke answered her, “Did you have to assume it was me?”

  “Zeke, I know you. So, yes!”

  “Oh well, you might as well come see.”

  Looking at the results from his test, Zeke was dumbfounded by what he saw. It looked like the first shield had almost held, but it did fail. The tweaked shield had held! Many times the power level he had been anticipating and it had held!

  Zeke knew he would have to be extremely careful with his explanations, or Julie would figure it all out. He had to give her enough information, but not all of it. Especially now, seeing how bad the explosion was going to be, he wanted her safely off in her corvette. He was pretty sure the new field configuration would hold, but still he couldn’t be absolutely sure. Nevertheless, he was going to tweak the fields in the corvettes too. They still would have to handle the others, undoubtably with nukes involved.

  Julie arrived a lot quicker than Zeke wanted. An hour would have been better! When she entered his lab and looked at the devastation next door, she stared in awe. “You did that? How could you have possibly done that?”

  “Just something I saw when I tweaked the fields on the big ship. Connect a power unit to a configuration similar to the shields but instead use an asymmetric shape with everything feeding to a single point. You should get a massive concentration at that single point, sort of a mini version of the big bang. Only the bang was a lot bigger than I expected.”

  “Oh my God! I see. You just made a quantum explosion by feeding the feedback loop on itself. And I’m sure you’ve already seen what it means. Do we dare build it? This would be many times more powerful than a nuke, wouldn’t it?”

  “I was only using a tiny power unit and I installed an AI to limit it and shut it down if it ever exceeded one percent power. Luckily, it did shut down. Yes, it would be a devastating explosion with easily obtained power levels. And no, I don’t want to build it, but I think we will. This would be a weapon of last resort, but you still need it. That’s the offensive reason.”

  “What if someone managed to send an asteroid toward the earth and somehow got it past all detection until it was too late? This would stop it. That’s a defensive reason.”

  Julie had been looking at his test results. She turned to look at Zeke in amazement. “Is this what I think it is? You built a shield that withstood that?” pointing at the lab next door.

  “That’s why I built it to start with. I was trying to test the new shield configuration and that was the only way I could think of to test it.”

  “Wow. So I guess you’re going to update everyone’s shields.”

  “Yep, especially now since you’re going to be in the corvette. That’s why I did it to start with.” Looking her in the eyes, Zeke went on. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you. Even blow up an entire lab!”

  That caused her eyes to mist up. “I know, Zeke. You’ve shown me many times and I would do the same for you.” She laughed. “Except the lab. I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, probably the whole section instead,” Zeke laughed with her.

  “I’m hurt, but you’re probably right.” Sighing, she pointed to the VR results. “This goes in an ultra, ultra protected file. No one, absolutely no one should know this.”

  Zeke nodded. “Already ahead of you—That’s the first thing I did. Only my AI and yours can decrypt it from here on out.”

  “Guess I’ll have to order a repair crew in.”

  Zeke wisely didn’t respond.

  #

  The next day, Zeke tweaked all the shield units to the new configuration. He felt a little better about everything afterwards. While he was working on the corvettes, he finished the work needed to enable the drives to work in the atmosphere, setting up the AI to automatically switch to that mode when it detected sufficient atmosphere.

  They also brought the plasma cannon online on the big ship. Zeke was rather insistent on that. If he did have to watch from a distance, he wanted to have the long distance weapon available. Zeke had no doubt it would be devastating if he had to use it. As he suspected, the smaller version for the corvette was going to take a while longer, but they still expected to have it soon. When she did get it to work, Julie’s dream of the little ship would be finally complete.

  Late in the day, they met with Joe and planned it all out. No one could come up with a valid reason to postpone it other than perhaps the plasma gun for the corvette, but Julie insisted she didn’t need it for this. She was really worried that the pirates would try another attack on the station and although they had the shield generators set up on a good portion of the station, she just couldn’t risk such an attack happening again. As far as she was concerned, they had paid much too dearly for the last attack. So everyone agreed it was a go for the next day.

  As part of the plan, Julie sent word that she would be making an announcement the next day from the Space Tech offices o
n earth and would be traveling there the next morning. Based on the information she had from the last attack, Julie believed the pirates still had a good enough spy network that she believed they would learn of that announcement and at least make preliminary plans regarding it, the first steps to luring them into her trap.

  Knowing the big event was coming the next day, that evening they spent time together as a group. After eating a meal together, they talked about the old days, going over times when they all were at the Space Academy. Of course, Julie was there as Miranda, back when she was first learning to use her nanites. Caitlyn was still slightly embarrassed by the way she had acted at that time.

  “But that’s not who you are now,” Julie told her, giving her a big hug. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  Joe somehow still had the VR footage of the pool game at the mid-term party. Of course, he had to show it. “I’m still upset with myself for getting mad and doing it in the first place,” Julie said to them.

  “But then we would be deprived of this,” Joe said as Miranda was setting up for the last shot. “Eight ball in the side pocket,” they all heard her say. The eight ball slammed into the pocket with the cue ball spinning around to stop exactly in the center of the table. “That’s still absolutely amazing, every time I see it.”

  They all laughed and spent time talking, but it wasn’t too long before they split into two couples. Julie and Zeke spent a long time just talking quietly and holding each other. They were desperate to have this time together, with the future appearing so uncertain. Zeke thought he knew how bad it might be, just how risky it was to play his part tomorrow. They couldn’t even do it together, thanks to the obelisk.

  Somehow, even Julie had a pretty good idea of how desperate the situation was.

  “Why do we have to do this?” she asked him finally. “They might possibly just give up and fade away if we left them alone. Or couldn’t we let someone else do it? I’m so tired of all this. I just want us to be able to live our lives and see our daughter be born and grow up into that beautiful young lady we saw in the vision.”