Minerva: An Alicia Jones Novel 06

by D. L. Harrison

  Nadia smiled faintly, “I didn’t say it.”

  “We can do it, but we’d be seen. So the only question is having my mother at my wedding worth risking an interstellar incident.”

  Nadia smirked, “I believe that was my question.”

  I sighed, “You know Nadia, most girls don’t have these problems getting their family to a wedding. I imagine just asking to pick them up for a visit would be laughed at?”

  She replied, “Almost definitely. Plus, you might want to ask them if they’ll take the risk. Even if the other worlds are only amused at the antics between you and Earth, they could be arrested for illegally leaving Earth when they get back. Space flight off planet is regulated, so technically they could be jailed and fined.”

  I sighed, “Al, send a record of this conversation to my mother, father and sister, along with Bill’s parents and his buddies at work. Make sure it’s secure and let me know what they decide to do. As for me, I’m willing to go get them, and damn the consequences for the president’s pettiness.”

  Nadia smiled lightly, “A girl needs her mother at her wedding, makes sense to me.”

  “Anything else?”

  Nadia shook her head, and I offered, “Take a break? I could use a coffee, and a chance to stretch my legs.”

  Nadia grunted, “You should have put in horizontal elevators. This place is too big.”

  I grinned, “Come on old lady, let’s get some coffee.”

  She snorted, and we went out the door.

  I’d tell her where the horizontal gravity shafts were later, I never used them, just the ones that changed decks. It was actually rather amusing, she must have assumed we didn’t have them, since we never really used them. Walking kept me in shape. All she had to do though, was ask her A.I. about it and she would have learned the truth…

  “Dr. Taryn, what seems to be the trouble?”

  I was mostly resigned to my new position in life. Things had gotten to the point where I could actually mostly concentrate on science, and my personal life. Most of the day to day administration was done by A.I. and as head administrator and leader of this station and world, most of my job involved being the complaint department. No wonder most governments had so much red tape, it was for leaders to avoid dealing with real problems.

  I’d actually come to enjoy it a little bit, it broke up my day, and the complaints had mostly slowed to a trickle. As far as science went, I was still mostly focused on improving current technology and improving our understanding of subspace and how it interacted with this space.

  Questions like, why did a pebble in our world emanate a specific radiative frequency in that other layer? And how exactly did that interdependence work. What kind of energy was it in that other subspace layer that was so inimical to normal matter and energy? Did matter here create some kind of multi-dimensional radiation or energy, or was it that energy that caused matter to exist in normal space?

  Maybe once I understood that I could move on to the next level of subspace, or go in a completely unanticipated direction.

  Regardless, I was pretty happy with life right now with Minerva, Bill, and even my job. Sure, complaints and the trouble getting our families here for the wedding were annoying, but not that serious in the grand scheme of things.

  The issue with James was a bit more serious, and I had a meeting with Kristi in a few minutes for her to explain her findings about what he was up to. I’d just grabbed a coffee when Dr. Taryn, of Tressia, ambushed me in the hallway. He was a geneticist researcher and I believed he had a wife and three young children.

  Dr. Taryn smiled, “Not a major problem as such. It’s about the androids.”

  I frowned, “I’m afraid Dr. Taryn that they’re here to stay, at least until suitable humanoid workers can be found for the jobs.”

  Dr. Taryn smiled wider, “I’m afraid you’ve jumped to conclusions Alicia, may I call you Alicia?”

  I nodded and he said, “Then call me Taryn. You see my wife is one of the few that finds work rather Zen and relaxing, but she only works a very small part time shift a few times a week when I can watch the children. We don’t want the androids taken away, quite the opposite, we were hoping we could acquire one as a babysitter, so my wife can have some time away from her responsibilities to do something else and recharge?”

  Well, wasn’t that interesting. Not a complaint at all, but a valid request. Surely the end of the world was nigh. I smiled a little sheepishly, I had jumped to conclusions, based on previous and repeated conversations, but still an assumption I probably shouldn’t have made.

  “I think we can arrange that. What type of job interests your wife?”

  He replied, “She currently works in the salon.”

  “If it’s just babysitting you want, perhaps the android in the salon could work out a switch for certain hours in the day? She could take over and the android can watch the kids. I believe that android is a friendly middle aged woman.”

  He nodded, “That would be sufficient, thank you.”

  I nodded, “My pleasure, I’ll make sure she’s aware your wife will talk to her about it next time your wife goes in?”

  He nodded again, and then we parted. I smiled as I headed for Kristi’s lab and office with a little something extra in my step.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I believed this job was also making me a little sneakier, because when Kristi told me what he’d been up to, and the proof we had from his A.I., I got an idea. We called Bill and had him come join us, as well as our resident sneaky political person Nadia.

  When they arrived Kristi explained what she’d found.

  “It took me a while, but I broke into his A.I. by spoofing his own implants, so the A.I. thought I was James. Something normally impossible, but his implants are offline, and with him in the brig there was no way for the A.I. to detect the issue without a live duplicate connection.

  “Regardless, his primary orders were as we suspected, find out about the subspace technology, and transmit it home. Obviously, he failed in that, since that data is not here on the station’s data core.”

  Technically true, it wasn’t on the stations data core. It was however, in my shoulder with Al. The copy out in the void was just the backup.

  Kristi continued, “If his primary mission failed, he was to try to steal, sabotage, or destroy the ship at all costs. I believe from what I gleaned from his A.I. he was still on the first activity. If he’d gained access he’d have overridden the internal gravity systems and safeties, and killed all of us, and returned to Earth with his prize to be used as an Earth asset, and to reverse engineer. So the question becomes what do we do about it?”

  I shivered, even if it was my second time hearing that.

  Nadia asked, “Was there any proof Earth’s governments were behind it?”

  Kristi shook her head, “No. He’d obviously been set up to take the fall if something went wrong and he got caught.”

  I nodded, “We could jail him, even kill him but I’m not for the death penalty. But that wouldn’t hurt the people that really sent him. James is just a spook following orders. So I had the idea that we could return him to Earth, and pick up our wedding guests at the same time.”

  I turned to Bill, “I’m sorry to say your buddies on the force won’t risk it, but Al got messages that our families want to come, even if they get stuck staying here until a new president got elected in office. I believe your dad said, and hopefully one with a lick of sense.”

  Bill chuckled.

  “Anyway, if we pick them up, and drop off James at the same time, and transmit our proof of his plans to Earth and all the other worlds, and where he was from, and that all we’d done in retaliation was send him back to Earth, …” I trailed off.

  Nadia smiled, “Then the Earth would be seen as terribly petty if they filed charges and made a stink about a few minor violations of atmospheric flight protocols.”

  I nodded, “That’s what I was thinking. Did I miss anything?”
<
br />   Kristi teased, “That’s kind of sneaky for you.”

  I blushed, “I want them here.”

  Kristi nodded, “So who’s flying this mission?”

  I cleared my throat, “I was thinking all of us, although it would be Bill and I that landed on the planet. Here’s my idea…” I explained the plan.

  The house ship, controlled by Kristi and Joe dropped out of subspace just a million miles or so from Earth, at the same time Bill and I moved into Earth orbit with the stealth ship. Really, it was just a science shuttle with the gravity shielding turned up so high it would bend particles around it, and hide our power source. About the only other difference was, we’d painted it black.

  The anti-mass field was still up as well, to hide us from mass sensors. We’d actually show up as a tiny meteorite when we started our drop into the atmosphere, which would be ignored. At least until someone in the government got eyes on the ship, when I landed it at my parents’ farm.

  The house ship was here for two reasons. The first reason was simply to be a distraction, just in case someone was bored enough to check out a tiny meteorite that would burn up in the atmosphere. It gave them something else to concentrate on.

  “You ready?”

  He nodded, and I ordered, “Go ahead Al, signal our parents and land right outside the back door.”

  The ship ripped through the atmosphere, and then slowed down to just under Mach one when we hit ten thousand feet. We were down in seconds. This was the fun part, when we had to lower the gravity shields, as well as the EM shields so our parents could board. We counted on their response being less than immediate, and also on the idea that they wouldn’t want to nuke or shoot plasma at the planet.

  It only took a few moments for the five of them to get on the ship, loaded down with suitcases and a few boxes. We hadn’t forgotten about James, and he was hog tied as we shoved him out the airlock and onto the grass. It was rather satisfying.

  I’d been a little surprised at my younger sister’s willingness to abandon her life on Earth for a while, but she looked happy to be there, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

  I might have even teared up a bit, we’d come a long way from the sibling rivalry we’d grown up with.

  So far so good, we brought up the shields and I sighed with relief. Even if they had been willing to nuke us at this point, it wouldn’t have mattered anymore. Not with our shields up.

  “Al, go ahead and send the transmission about James, to every world leader and television station on Earth, and all the planetary leaders for the treaty worlds. And get us back into space.”

  Al replied as the ship started to lift, “Done.”

  This would have been far easier if subspace tech could operate in an atmosphere without destroying it. That also meant even with triple EM shielding, we’d be extremely vulnerable as we left atmosphere. They had far more than sixty turrets, so if the government people on the ground in Texas got the word out, we’d be in trouble.

  If they were slow enough, and the house ship a big enough distraction, we’d be safe after gaining a short distance.

  My mother hugged me, “Try not to blow us up dear.”

  I chuckled, “I’ll do my best.”

  Despite our best efforts, Earth wasn’t stupid, and neither was Sergei. As we cleared the atmosphere we were literally boxed in by Shield defense missiles, as well as anti-FTL missiles, which meant we definitely couldn’t go to FTL to escape. I didn’t think the missiles could see us anymore, not now that we were above the atmosphere, but there was literally no exit point that the shuttle would fit through. The anti-FTL missiles had the whole inside of the box covered in heavy gravity fields that were constantly stripping our FTL field anyway.

  They must have planned for this, assuming I’d come get them at some point.

  Al said, “You are being hailed by Admiral Abramov.”

  Crap.

  “Sergei, how’re things?”

  He chuckled without humor, “You shouldn’t have come. You will immediately deactivate your stealth technology and land on the nearest ship to be placed under arrest.”

  I asked, “Aren’t you forgetting the other ship?”

  Sergei replied, “I don’t think Kristi, or whoever you have over there, will do anything rash. It would be a shame if your ship was destroyed instead of taken into custody, but I won’t allow you to escape.”

  My mother looked scared, and I winked. This wasn’t ideal, but it was a scenario we’d discussed, it was also the second purpose for having the home ship here. Sure, we were too close to earth to utilize a subspace wave, plus that same wave from the house ship would also destroy us. But there was the small matter of the initial experiments, and the weapon we’d created that would open a stationary tear in subspace, and destroy anything in front of it for ten miles.

  Not as effective as a wave, but far, far, more precise.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline Sergei. Now would be a good time Kristi.”

  A large circled tear in subspace appeared at the nose of our ship, oriented in front of us, for just a moment. All the shield missiles and FTL missiles on that side of the box were vaporized by subspace radiation. It was also orientated away from Earth. As soon as the disc disappeared, Al took us out at point six the speed of light. Out of the box yes, but there were hundreds of thousands of searching missiles on seemingly random vectors.

  Still, a couple of minutes later and we were clear enough to make FTL safely, and went to maximum speed. The house ship of course, rendezvoused with us at a safe distance, and we landed in the mini-shuttle bay.

  I smiled, “We’re safe now. But first thing is we’re going to the bedrooms on this ship so you can put on ship suits in case of decompression. It isn’t very likely, but we all need to wear one.”

  My mom smiled nervously, and Tina giggled in relief. My father looked pretty calm actually. Bill’s parents smiled at me faintly, I wasn’t too nervous about meeting the in-laws, I’d known them since I was a baby.

  We walked up the stairs to the hall with the four bedrooms, and we got them all changed, with the same clothes put back on over top. My mom was quite scandalized by the curve hugging fabric but that’s how the suits worked.

  Kristi came in the room a moment later and stared at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Pavel, on the nuclear submarine in Star Trek four.”

  My eyes widened in innocence, “Are you suggesting I quoted star trek when I said now would be a good time?”

  She snickered, “Yes. You even had the same inflection of voice he used.”

  I sighed, “Busted. I didn’t think you’d get that one. Plus, you came through when Scotty totally failed Pavel.”

  Kristi giggled.

  Tina rolled her eyes, but had a smile on her face when she asked, “When are we getting to the space station?”

  Kristi said, “About twenty seconds ago.”

  Tina raised an eyebrow.

  Kristi shrugged, “This ship moves ten thousand light years per second, and Minerva is right around eight thousand light years from Earth. It actually took much longer for the bay to depressurize so we could enter, and pressurize after we landed in it than the second it took to get here.”

  She looked at me and I nodded.

  “We haven’t exactly been advertising our capabilities, we don’t want to make people too nervous.”

  My father asked, “What capabilities, and why are you worried about others being nervous.”

  I glanced at Kristi and she shrugged.

  “Umm, because a lot of people would die if they tried to attack me, and I figured that was worth avoiding. Still, they already have a good idea, come with me.”

  We all headed up to the bridge.

  My mother cleared her throat, “A hot tub and workout room?”

  I nodded, “It’s umm, our bridge,” I blushed.

  “At least, this is where the bridge was, and it still has its holographic-emitters.”

  I showed t
hem the video of one small shuttle against Earth’s entire navy, give or take a few ships, and then I showed them real time data of over a hundred galaxies. Lastly, I showed them the destruction of the Bugs orbitals for eighty-five worlds in less than two minutes.

  My father whistled, “I think I understand. You’re worried they’ll be scared into doing something stupid, and dying, not of you being hurt.”

  I nodded, “This stuff is top secret, only the people in this room really knows all of it. The worlds know I took care of the bugs, but not how fast or how easily. So please don’t mention it ever, not even between us unless you’re sure we have privacy.”

  Strangely I didn’t feel sad or guilty about it much anymore. I wasn’t proud of it, or happy about it, and I never would be. But I wasn’t punishing myself for the massacre anymore either. Sometimes in life there are no good choices, just the choice to do nothing, or pick the lesser of two evils. It had to be done.

  After that, we gave them a tour of the little house ship, a brief tour of the station, which I supposed was really just a huge ship, and we checked out the park before we got our parents to their quarters.

  As for Tina, Kristi and I took her to the club that night, and invited Nadia along too. It turned out my sister wanted to try living here for a while, and was excited about meeting other races, or as she put it with humor, those evil aliens like her sister.

  I’d have invited Bill as well, I loved to dance with him, but by Kristi’s decree it’d become my bachelorette party night. It seemed hard to believe a month had gone by that quickly, but it had. Not that I minded, I really couldn’t wait…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kristi smiled as she, my mother, my sister, and Bill’s mother fussed over me to get me ready. Although the latter left early to join her son about an hour before the wedding. The dress I’d chosen was fairly simple as wedding dresses went, but even so it was still the most complicated dress I’d ever worn.

  Kristi and my sister were both in teal dresses, I took mercy on them, but still hedged my bets. They looked good, but the color was still just a little bit horrid.