by Frank Carey
"Welcome Conquistador. You are cleared to land. Your passenger is pacing on the roof. Winds are calm. Approach from two-seven-zero true and follow the marshaller's directions. Control out."
"Thank you, control," Harmon said as he adjusted course and speed. "Ever fly in a helicopter?"
"No, why?"
"Conquistador is both a spacecraft and an aircraft. In aircraft mode, we land rolling like a fixed-wing aircraft or land vertically like a copter. The landing gear adapts. Today we are a very large helicopter," Harmon said as a hologram appeared over the central console. Harm put his hand in the image which immediately formed a virtual glove around it. The ship now followed the motion of his hand as the Conquistador circled the field once before coming down vertically per instructions from the marshaller they could see through the front window. "Those sticks she's holding give me visual clues about Conquistador's attitude with respect to the deck."
Aerith watched as her father matched Conquistador to even the minutest motion of the marshaller’s sticks as he slowly lowered the freighter to the deck.
"Perfect," Harm said as the marshaller signaled they were safely down. He cut the Conquistador's engines except for the auxiliary power plant hidden in the port side airfoil. "We won't be here long enough to require ground power. Now, where is our passenger?" he asked as he walked over to the starboard side hatch. As it opened, he could see sandal-clad female feet.
"Harmon!" the passenger yelled as she ran through the hatch to grab him in a bear hug.
"Gloria! What a surprise! Aerith, look. It's your cousin Gloria," Harmon said as he tried to extract himself from her grip.
"Aerith!" Gloria yelled as she released Harmon to give her young cousin a more lady like embrace. "Look at you all grown up. Helping out your father on a run I see."
"Yeah, he's getting a little gray in the tail, you know what I mean?"
"Really?" Harm asked as he grabbed the appendage and examined it. "OK, maybe a little."
Aerith hugged him to let him know she was kidding.
They stepped aside as members of the ground crew brought in Gloria's considerable baggage.
"I may need a bigger ship," Harm muttered.
"Stop that. A girl needs her things!" Gloria said as she cuffed him. "Where's my stuff?"
"In the aft hold. You can check it after we're underway. The NAVComp shows a one hour thirty minute flight from here to Deltafish's current position."
"You're all set, Captain," the ground crew supervisor said while handing Harm a sign-off form. Harm signed it and handed it back to the super along with a receipt for him to sign.
Once the paperwork was out of the way, the supervisor left Harm to seal the hatch. "Gloria, need anything? We have a variety of beverages and snacks in the galley," Harm said.
"I'm fine," she replied. "Thanks."
"Then you and Aerith find a seat and strap in. We'll be taking off momentarily," he said as he looked through the hatch window to make sure the stairway was gone.
After a final check of the cabin and his passengers, Harm returned to the cockpit and began preflight. Satisfied all was well, he called flight control for takeoff clearance. Ten minutes later, the Conquistador was at cruising altitude on a heading which would take it, its passengers, and cargo to meet with the Submarine Deltafish.
Chapter Four
Once the Conquistador was on course, Harm let Roscoe fly the ship while he went back to the main cabin.
“So, Cuz, what’s with all the hardware?” he asked.
“Didn’t they tell you anything?”
“Nope, but that’s to be expected with an ultra-rush job. So, what’s the scoop?”
She shrugged, then told him and Aerith about the mission.”
“We’re going to visit Mom while she’s working a real op?” Aerith exclaimed. “That is so cool!”
“And she needs a cargo bay full of bots? Isn’t that a little unusual?” Harm asked.
“You know Royce and Marta,” Gloria replied. “They always over-estimate. Now, where’s my stuff?”
Harm took Gloria to the aft cargo bay. He noticed Aerith hanging back nervously which reminded him of a problem with his current course of action.
"What the hell happened to my Minotaur?" Gloria exclaimed, running over to her creation.
The Minotaur suit was standing at the starboard-side charging station where it was plugged into ship's power. In the center of the bay was the remains of the suit's packing crate, which looked like a bomb had gone off inside it.
Before Aerith could say anything, Harm said calmly, "I needed to borrow it for a few minutes. I had a little problem which only the suit could solve. I..."
"You stole government property to do what? Open a safe? Harmon..."
"It wasn't his fault, Gloria. He used it to save my life!" Aerith yelled as she walked between Gloria and her father.
"What?" Gloria asked.
"Cuz, look I made a mistake..." Harmon said, but stopped as Gloria raised her hand as a signal for him to shut up and let his daughter explain.
Aerith told Gloria what had happened. Gloria's look changed from anger to concern as the young elfling told her story.
"Oh my God, are you OK? I'm so sorry. Harm, what I said..."
"Is deserved and forgotten. What counts is Aerith is safe, and I've explained the downfalls of the smuggler's life to her, right kiddo?"
Aerith nodded vigorously while nervously watching Gloria. She had heard stories about her cousin's temper which could suddenly flare without warning.
Gloria walked over and tousled her cousin's hair. "I need to run a couple of diagnostics on the unit before we get to the Deltafish. Care to give me a hand?" she asked Aerith.
"Sure!" the young girl said. They walked out into the cabin to retrieve a diagnostic scanner before returning to the suit to work while Harmon watched, as if waiting for something.
A few minutes later Gloria stopped and suddenly straightened as if she had gotten a shock. "Aerith, honey, could you give Harm and me a moment alone?"
"What's wrong," Aerith asked.
"Nothing's wrong, kiddo," Harm said from across the bay. "Just give us a few minutes. Everything's fine, I promise."
"OK..." Aerith replied as she went forward, closing the hatch behind her.
"You knew?" Gloria asked, holding up the log readout for emphasis.
"Did I know that Kobo had a fully charged neurolizer ready to fry my brain? Yes, I knew. I could see the damn thing's status lights on the Mauler's back from the cockpit. That's why I slugged him. The moron never figured out how to install a back-feed buffer on his interface, so slugging the suit stunned the real him long enough to get a jump on the suit."
"And if he wasn't stunned and used that abomination on you?"
"My brain would look like pea soup and the OffSec suits would have a hell of a problem on their hands. So what's your point?"
"What's my point? Did you just miss the part about pea soup?"
"He threatened my daughter. That is unacceptable. Did Royce ever tell you about Kobo and my partner, Collette?"
"No..."
Harmon walked over to a cupboard and pulled a headset from it. He put it on and pressed a button on the side. Gloria was shocked into silence as the Minotaur came alive. Harm leaned against a crate with arms folded while he operated the suit.
"He was, and is, scared of me, so he went after Collette to avenge something we had done. He used this against her," he and the suit said as he opened the Minotaur's left hand. Inside was a partially crushed field knife with its blade retracted. A field knife is a monomolecular filament attached to a handle and encased in a force field. It can cut through anything. "This and the neurolizer are his tools of the trade. He planned to use this on Aerith." He dropped the remains of the knife into Gloria's hand. "If you or anyone else have any doubts about what drives me, just show them that knife. No one, and I mean no one, is going to hurt any member of my family including you, Tannith, and Royce, but especially Marta
and Aerith. I've died once protecting them, and I have no qualms about dying again." With that, the suit returned to the charging station while Harm deactivated the headset and removed it from his head.
Gloria watched him then looked back at the suit. "How the hell did you do that?" she asked.
"Did you hear anything I just said?"
"Yeah, yeah, save the world. Blah, blah, blah. How the hell did you do that?"
He tossed her the headset. "Put it on, press the button for three seconds and you'll connect to the nearest active suit. It's multiplexed to allow the operator to remain conscious and aware of his or her real body while driving the unit. It gives full tactile and sensory transfer plus voice to and from the suit."
Gloria put it on and pressed the button. Three seconds later, she was driving the Minotaur. "What if the headset falls off?"
"The operator is fully buffered, so a disconnect just shuts down the link while the suit goes to standby. The operator would just experience the end of the feed."
"Hey, are you guys finished with whatever you're doing?" Aerith asked as she stepped through the hatch while Gloria sat down hard on a packing crate. "What's wrong with her?"
"Your father condensed a room-filling medbed unit into this," Gloria said, holding out the headset.
"You know how it is. Long trip with periods of mind-numbing boredom. I tinker a lot to pass the time." He walked over to another cupboard and pulled out two boxes—one filled with headsets and the other with hacker balls of all colors and sizes. "Ooooh," Aerith said as she took the box of hacker balls from Harmon. He handed the other box to Gloria. "Can you do something with these? There's a flash drive in there with the plans and specs."
"You're kidding me, right?" she asked with eyes wide. "These... These will revolutionize telepresence operations. Do you realize how much these are worth?" She stopped and pulled a headset out, one with her company logo hand-scrawled on it. "Really?"
"It's crude, but I think it captures the essence of your company," he said.
"Do you have some water?" she gasped.
"Sure." He hurried over to the refrigerator and grabbed her a bottle.
After taking a deep drink, she put the bottle on the crate next to her and stared at him. Off to the side she saw Aerith pulling out balls and examining them, looking for the perfect one. "Harmon, who the hell are you?"
"Your cousin, remember? Your father is my mother's identical twin."
"The Harmon I know is an ex-smuggler, at least that's what I remember. Now I come to find out that you know more about biocybernetic engineering than John, me, and the rest of the Cube staff combined, yet you deliver parts in a jacked freighter. Explain this to me."
"What's to explain? I've got to be me," he replied with a smile.
"You really cobbled these together in your down time?"
"Not just those," he replied. "Hand me that blue one there."
Gloria did as she was told and watched as he donned it. He tapped the power button three times then waited. A scratching noise came from another cupboard before the door swung open and a large squirrel jumped out onto the deck. It ran over to Aerith and climbed on her head causing her to scream. It jumped off, ran over, and climbed onto Gloria's crate. "So, how do I look," both it and Harm said while both of them waved their tails.
Gloria picked the little bot beast up and examined it with a magnifier she took from her pocket. "The detail is incredible. I see no hint that's its anything but a squirrel."
That's because it's a synth," he explained.
"How long did it take to grow the body?"
"It took six hours, and I didn't grow it. I printed it."
"You printed an organic construct?"
"I got bored, bought a 3D printer, and hacked it to print at a cellular level. Found a place online selling non-specific cellular suspensions which I use as the printing medium. The hard part was programming the synthetic DNA on the fly. Ended up creating an eight-core quantum computer in the printer head. Luckily, I was able to find a woman selling positronic brains on the InterWeb..." He stopped when he saw the looks on his companion's faces. "Find one you like, honey?" he asked Aerith.
"What? Oh, yeah. This one," she said. She showed him a smaller ball in purple with alien green stripes. He took it from her and touched it to his ball before handing it back to her. "You're all set. Hey, you two OK? You both look a little pale."
"Dad, you printed a synthetic squirrel and turned it into a TP suit. Don't you find it a little shocking?"
Harmon smiled. "Not as shocking as the paint job on your HaB," he replied.
Before Gloria could add to the conversation, the temple bell sounded. "Sir, we are twenty minutes out from the Deltafish."
"Thank you, Roscoe. Ladies, please adjourn to the lounge and strap in. We will be landing soon." He looked over at Gloria who was still staring at him in shock. "Come on, Cuz. You and I will have a long, serious talk when your op is over. I promise."
"Damn skippy we're going to talk, Mister." Gloria said as she grabbed the squirrel while he stowed the two boxes, all except the headset she had around her neck. "Who's Roscoe?"
"My NAVComp," he replied. "Roscoe, say hello to Gloria."
"Hello, Dr. Aymar. It is very nice to finally meet you. Your papers on biocybernetics are wonderful reads."
Gloria's eyes got huge. "Thank you, Roscoe. It's nice to meet you to." She gave Aerith a look filled with both questions and panic.
"Come on, Cuz. I'll explain everything," Aerith said as she took her shocked cousin back to the lounge.
"Ms. Gloria seems nice, sir," Roscoe said.
"She is," he replied. "Rosco, prepare for landing."
"Yes, sir."
After sealing the hatch and making sure his guests were strapped in, Harmon sat down and called the sub. "Deltafish, Deltafish, this is LTV Conquistador approaching from the Northwest. Do you copy? Over."
"Conquistador, this is Deltafish. We read you five by five and have you on the scope. Continue approach and hover above the aft cargo bay hatch. We'll flash strobes, over."
"Copy that, Deltafish," Harm said as he took the conquistador down. After circling the boat once, Harm brought the freighter to a hover directly over the now open rear hatch. Down below he could see a strobe flashing on the landing deck inside the massive submarine.
"Conquistador, you are lined up perfectly. Please set the controls to remote."
"Roger that, Deltafish. You are now driving the bus," Harm said. He let go of the controls and sat back to watch the fun. The Conquistador slowly dropped through the hatch to land gently on the hangar deck below. Once they were down, Deltafish relinquished control, allowing Harm to shut down the engines and switch the ship over to ground power. As a last step, he opened the cabin and aft cargo bay hatches. "We've arrived. Thank you for flying Smuggler Airlines. We hope you will fly with us again."
"This is so cool," Aerith said while running up to give her dad a hug. Meanwhile, Gloria went aft to check on her equipment. A moment later Aerith ran after her leaving Harm to take care of captainy chores.
"While I live and breathe! Who the hell let you on board," Marta said as she strolled into the ship. "Permission to come aboard, you old pirate."
Harm got up, walked over to his wife, and kissed her. "I am not that old," he said.
"Hi, Mom," Aerith said from the aft hatch.
"Aerith?" Marta asked with growing concern. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I can explain..."
"She's helping me on this trip. I got an urgent call from OffSec Agent Powell asking if I could make a fast delivery. I needed help, so Aerith volunteered."
"Right..." Marta said as she gave her husband one nasty looking hairy eyeball. "Now, what really happened?"
"Marta!" Gloria yelled as she ran from the aft hatch over to where everyone was standing while giving Aerith a long look in the process. "Damn, girl. The Marine life is treating you well." What followed was a whirlwind of girl talk and catching up
. Royce walked up next to Harmon and asked, "What really happened?" as he glanced at Aerith.
Harm explained. "I took care of the problem and everyone's fine, but I felt it prudent to bring her along. It wasn't until I picked up Gloria that I found out you, Marta, and the team were involved."
"I saw the Minotaur was out of its crate, and rather violently, I might add. Did that have something to do with Aerith's caper?"
"Yes. Like I said I took care of the problem."
"And I always thought it was your wife who had the temper."
"She does, which is why I hope to defer this discussion with her until after she's home."
"Copy that," Royce said. "By the way, why is my sister carrying around a bushy-tailed tree rat?"
"It's a synth TP suit I gave her. Something I printed in the lab."
"Most people print greeting cards."
"In case you didn't notice, I'm not most people."
"Copy that."
"Gloria, where do you want the nice researchers to take your stuff?" Royce asked.
"I need a lab," she replied as she hugged Aerith and Marta one last time before heading back to the cargo bay. "Harm, can I leave the Minotaur here for now?"
"Sure. I'll bring it a tea and a nice steamy romance novel to read, so it doesn't get bored."
"That would be great...you moron," she said with a headshake.
"Why do all my family members call me that?" he asked.
"Because we love you," Marta replied with a kiss. "We'll talk later."
"Right," he said while trying to think of ways he could steal a life raft and get as far away from this boat as possible. "Aerith and I will be here if you need us."
Marta gave them both a thumbs-up as she headed out the door.
"Think she'll be mad when she finds out?" Aerith asked as the last crew person left.
"Be afraid. Be very afraid," Harm said. "How about we watch a vid? I'll make the popcorn."
Chapter Five
Gloria stood at the front of the Bridge and watched readouts from two probes she launched twenty minutes ago as well as the ship's sensor feeds. "Captain, we are holding twenty meters out from the force field and await your permission to proceed," she said. Behind her, Torga and Nachase kept watch on the rest of the data readouts while Marta and Royce watched from the side.
