by Ira Tabankin
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While Kalteck and Rhett had been searching for the alien ships which were abducting humans, NASA completed an important step needed to mine the asteroids. Rhett had left the calculations with NASA to complete a unique mission which turned out to be a complete success. NASA, for the first time landed a probe on a moving asteroid. Had Rhett and Kalteck been on Earth, they would have celebrated this special event. This gave NASA the knowledge how to land on small fast-moving objects paving the way to mine the asteroids and one day even comets.
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On the morning of September 11, 2001, two airplanes flew into the World Trade Towers. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and the one that was targeting the Capitol was brought down in the fields of Pennsylvania by the plane’s passengers. The four planes involved in the attack were:
American Airlines Flight 11: departed Logan Airport at 7:59 a.m. en route to Los Angeles with a crew of 11 and 76 passengers, not including five hijackers. The hijackers flew the plane into the northern facade of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 175: departed Logan Airport at 8:14 a.m. en route to Los Angeles with a crew of nine and 51 passengers, not including five hijackers. The hijackers flew the plane into the southern facade of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 9:03 a.m.
American Airlines Flight 77: departed Washington Dulles International Airport at 8:20 a.m. en route to Los Angeles with a crew of six and 53 passengers, not including five hijackers. The hijackers flew the plane into the western facade of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, at 9:37 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 93: departed Newark International Airport at 8:42 a.m. en route to San Francisco, with a crew of seven and 33 passengers, not including four hijackers. As passengers attempted to subdue the hijackers, the aircraft crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m.
The nanites inside the skulls of the hijackers were destroyed in the crashes and intense fires, leaving no proof of any outside involvement in the attacks. The attacks left almost 3,000 people dead and led to the second Gulf War. While Rhett slept, President George W. Bush ordered the bombing of Afghanistan and approved the plans for the land invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Just as Kalteck had predicted, America went to war against a religion, a battle they couldn’t win by fighting a conventional war. Kalteck entered his suspension tube worrying that the event was going to damage his friendship with Rhett and his master plan. He also worried that with him and Rhett being stranded in an unknown sector of space, Earth might sway from his plan. Kalteck knew that any deviation from his plan might lead to the destruction of the human race and, more importantly, remove the planet Earth from his people’s plan to rebuild their ancient home, Mars.
Chapter 2
The damage to Kalteck’s ship was more serious than the ship’s AI had initially thought. The AI realized it not only had to create additional nanites to repair the ship, it needed raw materials for the nanites to break down to their atomic material to use for the repairs. The AI also needed special metals so the nanites could rebuild its own core and memory modules. While the AI was planning how to repair the ship it still had to resolve the issue of where they were.
The AI also wondered if he should wake the sleeping Kalteck to inform him the repairs were going to take significantly longer than they’d thought. After spending a few hundred processing cycles debating with itself the AI decided since there wasn’t anything Kalteck could do to alter the repair process and having him awake would decrease their stored food supply, he decided not to wake him or Rhett. He also decided he should rebuild himself before he created the additional nanites to complete the ship’s needed repairs.
The AI attempted to locate their position. However, without his damaged cores, he couldn’t determine where they’d exited the wormhole. None of the stars matched anything in his memory. He used the remaining ship’s sensors to search for a nearby relay station so he could use its position to determine where they were, and he could use the station to send a message updating their current situation back home. He was depressed when he couldn’t locate any relay stations. The lack of a relay station meant they were far off the beaten path and in unknown or unexplored space. The AI determined its only logical course of action was to continue repairing the ship and then he would jump somewhere else, anywhere else that hopefully would be in a known area of space. The AI worried that he could be setting them on a course of jumping into unknown area after area taking up time they couldn’t afford to waste without locating a system the AI knew so he could plot their return to Earth’s system.
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Rhett dreamlessly slept in his suspension tube. He was unaware of time passing or that his nanites were slowly and gently altering his memories so when he woke, he wouldn’t be filled with rage and he would not only understand, he’d agree with Kalteck’s logic for having radical Muslims attack America. Kalteck knew he was taking a huge gamble in altering the memories of his friend. He justified it based on his need for a person he could trust to be his interface, and Rhett knew so much, and he had grown to become friends with him. His only other option was to terminate Rhett, something he couldn’t bring himself to do.
While Rhett and Kalteck slept, time marched forward. In 2004, NASA succeeded in sending a probe to collect solar dust, and it succeeded in sending the Cassini probe to orbit Saturn. Kalteck had wanted to be there to ensure the probe didn’t capture images of any previous battles or ship debris. He was lucky that the probe’s orbit, which he had supplied to NASA through Rhett, carried the probe just above a small debris field. A year later, in 2005, the Cassini probe successfully landed on Titan. NASA was successfully following Kalteck’s master plan without realizing they were following a script.
In January 2006, NASA’s Stardust probe returned with samples from a comet. The long-range probes and proving they could land probes on small moving objects flying through space at high speed were tests for the development of space weapons and mining. NASA thought they were flying science probes to unlock the mysteries of space. They didn’t realize the technologies they were developing were going to be used in the development of space weapons used to attack moving spaceships.
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Kalteck and Rhett continued to sleep in their tubes unaware of the passing time. On Earth, the Americans invaded Afghanistan and then Iraqi so the younger President Bush could complete the mission his father had started ten years earlier.
As the war in the Middle East dragged on, America began to grow weary of the war as calls for stopping its spread with the election of a new President. The American public thought any new war would be fought like the first Gulf War, in and out very quickly while crushing America’s enemies.
As time passed and a new American President was elected. The newly elected President didn’t know about Kalteck. President Bush was concerned when he attempted to contact Rhett to set up the meeting with President-elect Obama, and Rhett didn’t respond. President Bush was told by Rhett’s CoS that the General had left on a mission with the alien, and neither had yet returned. “When did they leave?” Asked the President, “When did they say they were going to return? The General knew we were going to have an election. He had never missed briefing a President since President Truman. Something seems wrong, are you sure he hasn’t contacted you?”
“Sir, I really don’t know what to say. I was told by the General they expected to return within a few months. It’s now been almost four years since they left. The alien has been gone for such times before, but never the General.”
“Have you attempted to reach them? I know the General has some way to contact the Kalteck.”
“Mr. President, I know the General has some kind of incredibly special communication device, one I don’t have access to it. I have sent the radio message that we usually use to inform the alien we need to speak with him, but as we both
know, it depends on where they are as to when they receive the signal. If they traveled a light-year or more away, it would take them a year to hear the message and another for us to receive their response.”
“Damn, I forgot how large space is and how long it takes for messages to travel back and forth. Why can’t you use his special device?”
“Sir, the General, locked his office. By locked, I mean with a device Kalteck gave him. The General told me that anyone attempting to break into his office would meet with a very deadly surprise. Sir, I believe him and don’t want to die attempting to break into his office, and then we’d have to break into his safe.”
“I see. Is Colonel Brix there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please put him on the line.”
A moment later, the Colonel picked up the red handset, “Mr. President, this is Colonel Brix how may I be of service?”
“Colonel, you are in charge of security at Area 51 is that correct?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I am. How may I be of service?”
“I need you to enter the General’s office and retrieve his communications device to contact his friend. I want you to tell him that I order him to return as soon as possible and to contact in the normal manner.”
“Sir, as I’m sure the major explained there is a special security system that the General’s special friend placed in the General’s office to protect it from just what you’re ordering me to do. I was told that entering the office while it was being protected by the device would result in instant death.”
“Isn’t there a way to disable the device?”
“None that we have. I’m sure the General has such a device…”
“Colonel, I am ordering you to break into the General’s home. Search it with the intent to locate the device which will unlock his office.”
“Yes, sir. I will follow your orders.”
The Colonel looked at the General’s CoS, “Does he have a home security system? And if he does, was it also a gift from his friend? Will I get fried attempting to break into his home?”
“Sir, yes, to all of your questions.”
“Damn, I was afraid you were going to say that. Okay, I’m going to try a few tricks, and I’ll record it for the President. If I don’t return by this time tomorrow, please stop at the General’s house and retrieve my body or ashes.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, do you think it’s wise to attempt to break into his house? We both know it’s most likely secured better than his office is. I’ve seen recordings of what happened when someone attempted to shoot his friend, it wasn’t pretty. They were cut down in an instant. There is also the officer who attempted to lay a hand on our friendly alien. He only lost a hand. Colonel, I enjoy taking your money in our weekly poker games, please be incredibly careful.”
Smiling and nodding, he replied, “Believe me, I have no intention of getting zapped or losing parts of my body. Plus, I want a chance to win my money back. I’ll know if the house is protected by our alien, I have a set of specially made glasses which can see the energy lines that may surround his home.” He handed the heavy pair of dark glasses to the major. “Try these, look at his office door. Tell me what you see.”
“Holy shit! I see crisscrossing lines of blue energy covering the door, and I see a blue shimmering tint along the walls.”
“That’s the energy barrier securing his office. If I see the same when I check his house, I’m coming right back here. I’m no fool. I don’t mind going into battle, but I’m not going to play games with some alien tech. I’ve seen and read the ultra-secret the results of what it can do.”
Two hours later, the colonel stood in front of the General’s CoS, “No way. That house is sealed and covered top to bottom with the blue energy mesh. I saw a couple of newspapers which must have been tossed against the house before the stop order reached the kid. The ends of the papers that touched the blue mesh are burned. They must have been thrown and hit the shield barrier. I’ll have to tell the President. This is a no go.”
“Lucky you.”
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While Rhett and Kalteck slept, the ship’s AI rebuilt its cores. It then attempted to figure out how to replace its lost knowledge. Without a relay station, he couldn’t get his home AIs to send him a new master update. He programmed the ship’s sensors to search for an inhabited local system so he could see what data he could suck out of their networks to hopefully rebuild his core’s lost memory and knowledge.
Weeks after reaching out to search for any close by intelligence, the ship’s AI got a hit. The ship’s rebuilt sensors were able to pick up RF and laser communications, which meant intelligent life. He ordered the production of additional nanites to speed up repairs while he plotted a course to the unknown system. He collected all of the data in the signals which he measured to their source. He determined that he and the crippled ship were still at least five light-years from the source of the signals. While the nanites worked on repairing the ship, he began moving it towards the unknown system.
The nanites couldn’t work on the exterior of the ship while it was in FTL travel, so the AI had to hold the speed to 0.8c until the ship was repaired. He decided to keep Kalteck and Rhett in their sleep tubes, so he didn’t have to spend nanite resource to repair the ship’s food replicators. He needed to use the available replicators to make parts to repair the ship. Even though advanced 3D printing and replicators were being used, complicated parts took time to create and then install. Time, he knew he didn’t have a lot of. He’d been ordered to repair the ship as quickly as possible, and plot a course back to Earth, so Kalteck’s master plan wouldn’t fall aside without Rhett there to monitor and feed advanced technology under the table to the hundreds of companies and the three governments to keep Earth moving forward.
Repairing the ship wasn’t a difficult task; use the ship’s tractor beams to pull in rocks which the nanites would use as raw building material, the materials would be used to create the parts. The AI would create additional nanites, he’d program them, and set them to work. Plotting a course back to Earth was a more complicated issue as the ship’s AI had to first determine where it was. None of the star constellations looked familiar. They might have been in his lower memory core had that core not been destroyed by the Neanderthal attack. The AI needed either a relay station or the Mars shrine to reload its memories.
The AI collected the data from the system he back tracked the signals to, after digesting the data, he decided to take the ship to the system as he might be able to gain enough location data so he could program their way home. He had decided he was going to pause at the outer edge of the system to gather as much intelligence as he could before he decided if he should take the ship into the core of the system or not. He hoped the beings in the system weren’t hostile.
The ship’s AI sorted through the signals, both those from the planet and from the hundreds of ships flying in the system. The AI had one major problem. He didn’t understand the system’s language. He had to build a dictionary in order to translate the incoming data. He calculated that he had a dictionary that was based on a 97.467% percent translation of the data and video transmissions. Once he was able to ‘read and understand’ the data, he knew he had to wake Kalteck.
Before waking Kalteck, the ship’s AI paused his translation work to create even more nanites to speed up the repairs and to improve the ship’s armor. He moved the ship into the tail of a large comet. He placed the ship on the rear of the comet in the hope of hiding his ship from any of the system’s sensors and warships.
Kalteck slept without dreaming. His core body temperature had been lowered so his dual hearts beat every other rhythm versus the normal of them beating together. All of his body functions had been slowed, so he aged at a very reduced rate of one hour per day. He had told the AI he thought he dreamed while the AI attempted to convince him dreaming was impossible due to his brain impulses being slowed, and many stopped.
He heard someplace in his mind a vo
ice calling him, “Kalteck, it is time for you to wake, the temperature in the pod is rising, I have ordered the chemicals in your bloodstream to be flushed and your body’s normal functions restarted. Open your eyes; the tube will open in twenty, nineteen, eighteen, …, ten, eight, seven, …, three, two, one.” The pod lifted and Kalteck held onto the railing which raised with the rising pod cover so he could stabilize himself.
“I am awake. Is the ship repaired? Are we back in Earth’s system?”
“Not exactly…”
“Not exactly what? The ship isn’t repaired. We’re not in Earth’s system? What’s your status and the status of the ship?”
“I am transmitting the data to your implant. I need your advice…”
“You, YOU need my advice; we must be in serious trouble. Do I have time to clean myself up and dress?”
