by Paul Phipps
“So who gives you your directions?” Admiral Jamesway asked.
“Ultimately it’s Seeker and Fleet Admiral Webster. We encourage and prize individuality and innovation though, so many of our Ships and Commanding Officers are or will be that is, Quasi-Independent commands. If they see something occurring that needs to be taken care of they go and do it. Knowing of course that their actions will be reviewed after the fighting is over.”
“It sounds almost like the old days before radio in the Royal Navy.” Admiral Jamesway said with a tone of wistful longing.
“Well our communications are a sight better than that Sir. However we have gone through as much of the naval histories that we can find and the British Royal Navy does stand out as an exemplary model to emulate. So we are using those parts we like as well as others from other countries navies.
Time will tell though how it all works out in the end though.” Susan told him.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Susan. If you are ever back in jolly old England give me a call.” The admiral said as he eased his chair back and stood up.
“I’ll be sure to call you next time I’m headed that way Sir James. Have a good weekend now.”
Tuesday, February 2, 2027
“Captain Thomas, please go first today.” Admiral Webster directed.
“Yes Sir, the big item today is that the Icelandic Ecological Institute will be acting as our agent in the Gene Collection project. I’ve directed that the South East Asia and South Pacific regions be given high priorities. They estimate fifteen years for the project to be complete. With them being our official face and our own discreet efforts at collecting specimens we should have this effort done in a significantly shorter time.”
‘Thank you Captain anything else of note?” Admiral Webster inquired.
“Not really sir, all of the other projects are progressing on schedule, with the Galileo City project being the furthest along. We are planning an emergency drill using the Comfort and her carried vessels in two weeks. We were approached by the Japanese Government and asked if we could do a Simulated Earthquake and Tsunami drill with them. I am looking forward to that by the way.”
“That sounds both interesting and fun.” Ansel commented, “See if you can get some of them interested in Enlisting.”
“I’ll do just that, nothing overtly mind you but I’ll have the word put out.” Evana told him confidently.
“Anything else Captain?”
“Not at the moment sir.”
“Captain Johansson?” Admiral Webster indicated that he was next.
“Yes sir, All Garbage and oil platforms are functioning normally and we are running at 75% capacity on average. Garbage deliveries are expected to continue to increase over the next three years until we are accepting around 80% of all the garbage and hazardous material disposal for the globe.
The Johnny Reb is at 60% of full manning and we are bringing another two Scalp hunter squadrons on-line this week. That will bring us up to five full squadrons of Scalp-Hunters and one of Starfighter Mk1’s. The Johnny Reb also has a full company of Marines at this time with all of their initial equipment load-out available for usage.”
“Excellent news! Is the quality of the recruit being furnished to you from basic training where you want to see it?” Admiral Webster asked.
“Yes sir, the quality is high but once again everyone including myself has a lot farther to go in both training and experience before we will be at our peak operating levels.”
The Admiral and everyone else at the meeting nodded in agreement.
“Next up is the Air Force Next Generation Fighter and SSTO projects.” At which point he gave a brief presentation as to where the projects were currently at. He finished up with, “Also Colonel Zorn is indeed a Quarn-Slave, he’s smart and he knows his way through the Pentagon Projects process. We are going to have to keep him away from any of our own assets while providing the SSTO that he will use to release the President-for-life from the IUR.”
“Very Good Captain and when do you expect we will be providing that SSTO demonstrator?” Admiral Webster inquired.
“That sir really depends on Lt. Commander Fuller and his intelligence group. Have they discovered the location of the Mother?”
“And with that question, let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth. Well Commander Fuller, have you discovered her location?”
“No, not definitively anyway, two of my apprentices are on-board the Cathartes a heavy scout cruiser with a small contingent of former U.S. Navy and Marine personnel who have graduated from basic as their crew and support staff. They are currently exploring the Nation of Indonesia since that is where the President-for-life indicates in his book that he found the mother Quarn in the first place.
We are using the Quarn exudates as a leading indicator as to there being any Quarn-slaves in an area. Fortunately and unfortunately there are a lot of them there, many hundreds at least, possibly over a thousand. Using that method has shown up at least six clusters and one super-cluster. A cluster is defined as at least twenty Quarn-Slaves and no more than fifty Quarn-Slaves, a Super-Cluster is more than fifty of them.
This also brings up something interesting to note in the analysis of this data. It now appears that the various Quarn-slaves from around the globe are converging on the Nation of Indonesia. We extrapolate this by the general reduction in Quarn Exudates outside of Indonesia and tremendous increase within the Nation. So it appears that the Mother is drawing them back to her for some reason. We’re hoping that it is not immediately detrimental to the Human Race.
Now then, my two operatives went into the Capital City of Jakarta to do a bit of foot reconnaissance. They are pretty sure that President Sukharta is a Quarn-Slave along with his Cabinet. That grouping is only a cluster though, the Super-Cluster is located at Banda Aceh on the island of Sumatra. It’s the largest city and the Provincial Capital of the province of Aceh.
The waters off of Banda Aceh would be near perfect for the Quarn Mother if she is a Water based entity. But because of the location we would be severely limited with kinetic strikes or thermo-nuclear weapons to destroy her. Destroying her with those methods would cause severe damage and loss of life to Sumatra and the city of Banda Aceh in particular.”
“Do you have any other candidate sites for her whereabouts?” Asked Admiral Webster.
With a derisive laugh Lt. Commander Fuller continued. “Admiral, just about anywhere in that region of the world is a possible site. We are going on the theory that she is in one location though. She been here long enough that whatever mobility she came with is now gone and she’s fixed to one location and must grow from that point outward.”
Ansel spoke thoughtfully at that point, “Have you done any data base searches on missing children in that region?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Well, we have two distinct historical records that give the Quarn a different name… Eater of children.”
“Eater of children…” Albert Fuller repeated quietly. “That’s a different way to look at things isn’t it? Aren’t Dr. Golden and Professor Li your two sources for that term?”
“Yes in addition to Professor Anagnostis.”
“Thank you Commander, I’ll have my people follow up on that angle.”
“You’re welcome.” Ansel told him with a grin.
* * *
Ansel was sitting in the living spaces that he shared with his two ‘special apprentices’ Peter and Tanya Randall, and Sarah Cavendish his Command Master Chief for Training. Each of them had their own bedrooms for privacy but felt the need for having ‘family’ to share common time with.
“Well Peter, Tanya, what did you do today?” Ansel asked them after their dinner was cleaned up.
“After we had our school and tutor period we got permission to visit Jerry in Fabrication.” Tanya said excitedly.
“Really? And what did you and Jerry work on?” Sarah asked curiously.
“Peter, had a
great idea last night in a dream! I went and did research in school during free-study and I thought it might work out and then Jerry looked it over and said that it probably could be done, We started in with basic parameters and then some advanced ones and then add-ons and advanced capabilities…” Tanya started and just never stopped talking until Ansel said,
“Whoa, Whoa… Sparky! Take a breath before you get anoxia.” He then looked over at Peter and said, “What idea Peter?”
“Remember where and how you found us?” Peter said slowly.
“Yes, I do, Peter it was only ten days ago. My memory hasn’t started to go in my old age yet.” Ansel said with a grin.
“Well, after Zip sic’ed the Bloods on Tanya and me, all I could think about was running and getting as far away from them. Last night I dreamed of a way to do that…” Peter slowed down and the remembered terror was in his eyes again.
“Annnddd?” Ansel drew out the word.
“And I dreamed of wings to let us fly away.” Peter said simply.
“Yeah!” Tanya said excitedly, “And Jerry said he would help us make them, Isn’t that so Cool!”
Sarah Cavendish looked from one twelve year old to the other and shook her head slightly and with a glance saw that Ansel was grinning broadly.
Sarah/Private Comm Mode: “Well Ansel, you look pleased at these two, why?”
Ansel/Private Comm Mode: “I’m so damn happy that they are coming out of their shells Sarah, Look at them! A week ago I couldn’t get two words strung together without them cringing that someone would beat them.”
Sarah/Private Comm Mode: “Yes, you’re right, that is something to be happy about.”
“So when do we get to see these wings?” Ansel asked Peter.
Peter smiled shyly and said, “How about now? Jerry said that he would meet us at Park #4. That one has the high roof and Grav-pool that Ms. Cavendish likes to swim in.”
Park #4 was one of the larger Parks in Asimov City. The roof overhead was nearly a thousand feet over their heads and the far end was ten miles away from the main entrance. There were only a few people there though. Even though there were now a little over ten thousand families of men and women going through the TSN basic training at Camp Heinlein most still were adjusting to the changes in their lives and playtime wasn’t that important yet.
A hologram of a man about five feet six inches wearing an old fashioned striped overalls, white shirt and striped railroad hat was waiting for them. Stacked around him were four bundles that looked nothing like wings.
Peter and Tanya raced over to him and were excitedly talking to him. Ansel and Sarah were slower to walk over and were enjoying the moment of watching the children acting like normal kids for once.
“Good evening Jerry!” Ansel said with a smile, “Tanya and Peter just about dragged us through to get here. So what do you have for them?”
“Actually Commander I have a set for each of you. The children call them Dragon Wings. It took me a little bit to get the idea out of them but once I did it was straight-forward engineering.” Jerry said quietly.
Ansel looked at one of the bundles on the ground and said, “Dragon Wings, eh? Hmmm, so how do they work and how do you put them on?”
Tanya was hopping from one foot to the other. “Please, Please! Me first, let me show you!”
Jerry said with an admonishing tone. “Tanya, you can wait until I have briefed the Commander on the usage of this equipment.”
“Yes, sir” She said with a subdued tone and then settled down to watch the adults talking.
The hologram that Jerry the fabricator was using turned to Ansel and continued, “The original request was for a set of wings that could be hidden and then deployed at need to be used to flee Peter and Tanya’s antagonists. After listening to Peter’s dream or maybe it was a nightmare and Tanya’s exposition what they had needed and didn’t have and how it was to work gave me an idea and a direction to go forward with for this request.
I used various studies on flight characteristics or birds, bats and insects I finally decided that a paired set of wings similar to a dragonfly’s would be a good compromise for use with a human body. This preliminary design uses a standard weight negation field projected from this standard Gravitation-neutralization field generator. Mass is therefore conserved and provides the necessary inertia containment for that system to work. Two paired projective field generators provide the actual wings that provide the motive force and lastly as a safety precaution for in-flight accidents there is a globular force field tuned for solid masses and energy fields similar to the Wings field generators.”
“Thank you Jerry, I understand the basics, now how does one use this device?” Ansel asked in bewilderment looking at the bundle in front of him.
“It’s actually very easy to use Commander, well I believe it will be anyway.” The Fabricator answered, “The unit in front of you is for Tanya or Peter. It’s a bit more involved because they do not have any of the standard TSN communication implants, therefore a slightly different controlling mechanism is required for them to use the Dragon Wings. I have also incorporated a few more safety items for their protection and quite frankly for those who might be in the air with them” He added more quietly.
“Here is your unit.” Jerry then reached down and picked up a more compact package that looked like a small backpack designed to ride high on his shoulders. “Please turn around an allow me to fit it to you.”
Once Ansel and Sarah were equipped with a Dragon Wing unit, the Fabricator assisted Peter and Tanya into theirs. Ansel and Sarah had already been apprised of a new connection through their Comm Implants and after a quick perusal of the command structure realized that once the Dragon Wings were fully incorporated all it would take was willpower to operate them.
“Ok, Peter this was your idea, show us how it’s done.” Sarah said encouragingly.
With a huge grin on his face he put on his helmet and then a faint haze of the force field flicked into being around him. Two filmy wing sets each eight feet long spread out from the pack and with a crouch and a leap into the air Peter was rising higher and higher into the air of the park. Tanya followed right behind him and then Ansel and Sarah were joining them.
At first they went slowly, getting used to the controls and the feeling of flight with no cockpit around them. Peter was first to accelerate away from the group then Tanya was streaking after him. Soon the two were engaged in aerial acrobatics that were as fast and unpredictable as a Dragonfly’s would be.
Ansel and Sarah chose to fly a bit more sedately and practiced hovering, flying backwards and although it took them longer than the two children they too were soon engaged in aerial maneuvers that left the people on the Park’s ground surface staring upwards in awe at them flitting about the air above them.
Later as the low power indicators were flashing on the four sets of Dragon Wings, they alighted on the ground near Jerry’s Hologram. The words were flashing about almost as fast as they had been themselves. The enthusiasm and sheer happiness at the feeling of flight was pouring off of them and their faces were radiant.
After thanking Jerry for all that he had done and the promise to seriously evaluate the Dragon Wings for improvements and possible problems the two adults and two children headed for their home.
Ansel and the others were in a jubilant mood when they got back to the common area of their quarters. He had ordered up each person’s favorite Ice Cream treat or sundae and they were enjoying those while discussing the Dragon Wings.
“Well Peter, did the Dragon Wings fulfill your needs and requirements?” Ansel asked after the two children had settled down to eat their gooey concoctions.
“Well Sir, for the most part they did. They aren’t as compact as I would have liked to have seen nor was the flight time as long as I wanted. But still they are wonderful aren’t they?” Peter finished up with a huge smile.
“Yes, they are wonderful. Alright Peter, Tanya, your homework assignment from me is
to provide a detailed analysis of the Dragon Wing System. You are to include take-off, in-flight and landing characteristics in your analysis. Then I want a general list of improvements to the system with emphasis on ship-suit and combat armor integrations.” Ansel told them firmly but with a large smile added on.
Tuesday, February 9, 2027. Admiral Webster’s Weekly Staff Meeting.
“Lt. Commander Fuller, Please go first his time.” Fleet Admiral Webster said.
“Yes Sir, We have had a major Breakthrough on one of the missing ‘Shaitan’s Breath’ vials. It is located at the former Missile Research and Development facility in the Province of Pakistan. We discovered it as a side item as we were spying on the small Quarn-Slave cluster that Captain Thomas had discovered a few weeks ago.
