by P F Walsh
The President stood with his hand outstretched as the Secretary entered the room and the door was closed behind him.
“Welcome back John, I am really pleased to see you are OK, and the reports say you are unharmed from that Russian poison crap. They tell me they put you through exhaustive testing and questioning, but you said you don’t remember anything, is that true?” Asked the President.
The Secretary came over to the President and shook his hand firmly and then took the seat the President motioned to, as the President sat alongside him on the couch.
“Not exactly Mr. President, you know the saying ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you?’” He said with a smile.
“I have the most bizarre but astonishingly important story to share with you, but only you.” The Secretary began with a detailed recollection of everything he had seen and heard. As he told his story he could see the level of the President’s skepticism definitely rising to complete incredulity.
“The Ship’s Artificial Intelligence anticipated your skepticism, so just before I came back on the shuttle, it gave me this to give to you as a small evidence of proof.” The Secretary reached into his suit coat pocket and took out a small medallion. It was a small replica of the Seeker, about two inches in diameter. The Secretary placed it in the air in front of the President, removed his hand, and it just stayed there, suspended without moving.
The President looked at the medallion and said
“What is it? How can it do that?”
“It is a child’s toy from their home planet. It defies gravity, I don’t know how it works, but you can place it anywhere and it will stay there. It is harmless, but obviously, nothing we could manufacture.” Said the Secretary.
“How did you get this past all the examiners?” The President asked.
“Simple.” said the Secretary,
“We made one stop before the shuttle dropped me off near Camp David and we mailed it to my sister. She brought it over yesterday when I was done with the testing and examinations. My instructions were to not share the medallion, the story, and the pending application of Earth with anyone except you because of the gravity of what may come about. But the medallion would prove at least a consideration of what I was saying. That medallion is going to drive your science guys nuts. Not only does it defy gravity, I was told it was made of a metal that we know nothing about.”
With all that, the President hesitantly caught hold of the medallion and moved it to another spot in free air and, of course, it stayed in place, unmoving. The President sat there for a while moving the medallion from one place to another, finally turning to the Secretary and saying,
“Tell me about this Sean guy and Doris, I want to know everything.”
In Rancho Mirage California,
“So, where’s Sean, we haven’t seen him in over a week, what’s going on Artie, you hear from him?” Karl asked, as the Seniors group all sat down for breakfast at their favorite meet point the Atrium. Artie, who was about to pick up the menu despite he ordered the same thing every week, said,
“You guys are always on my case. This time, Sean has got us all beat. He took in a house guest, an LA Police Officer on leave, and he called me a few days ago and told me they were going to hike the Pacific Coast Trail and would be gone for a few months.”
“House guest, who is he?” asked Mel, one of the regulars who usually didn’t have much to say.
Artie answered,
“Not he, she! Not only that, she is probably 50 years younger than Sean.”
Karl chimed in,
“The Pacific Coast Trail, Jeez, that’s over a thousand miles long, isn’t it? How the hell is an 80-year-old guy going to do that?”
“Very slowly.” Answered Artie.
“Yeah, but what if something happens out there, I mean it’s definitely wilderness. Did you read about the guy with the machete? Didn’t he kill someone on that trail?” Asked Karl.
Artie put down the menu and said,
“Y’know, he’s always wanted to do that trail, he’s got no reason not to go, and his trail partner is much younger. She’s a cop, with a gun, and from LA, so she’s used to dealing with nut jobs. Perfect situation for Sean to do that trail. He’s got a cell phone and may call once in a while, but I wouldn’t count on it. You guys know what you want to order yet?”
Four days had passed and both Sean and Doris had been glued to their terminals trying to learn as much as they could from the seemingly limitless database that the ship had on what they didn’t know about the sentient life in the far reaches of the galaxy, which was everything. They took breaks for food, rest, a daily workout in the gym, and some leisure time with Allister at dinner where they could shoot questions at him on subjects they didn’t quite understand. There were some subjects, where despite Allister’s willingness to answer their questions, Sean and Doris didn’t have the scientific background to understand the answer.
Neither of them dwelled on the areas where insufficient understanding was in place because the vast amount of social, political, legal, cultural, and economic areas was daunting enough. The differences were everywhere as were similarities, but it was easy to see how assumptions would lead either of them astray when interfacing with an alien culture. The similarities were abundant enough that such assumptions could easily be made, but they would be wrong.
Sean was finishing up having a lunch break when Allister appeared to ask if there was anything he could provide. Sean, looking for a break from the hours in front of the data terminal said,
“Allister, I need a break from all this reading I’ve been doing. I think my head will explode if I try to fit any more data in it. Is there somewhere we have not yet toured? I could use some walking exercise.” Allister answered,
“Yes, my records show you have not seen the engines, the shops where we can manufacture our own parts, and the bridge. Would you like to see those?” Sean was quick to answer,
“Absolutely!”
Allister replied,
“I see Doris is sleeping right now, shall we wait, or wake her to join us?”
“No, she was up all night on her terminal and needs to get some uninterrupted rest. Its’ fine for just the two of us to go.” Sean answered as he rose from the table.
Allister took Sean to the engine room, which like everything else on this ship was enormous. Sean expected a room full of conduits, pipes, glowing instruments everywhere, but the room was simplicity, immaculate with the engines being covered entirely with a gleaming metal shroud, and only one terminal at a metal desk, causing Sean to wonder,
“How is it maintained?”
Allister anticipated Sean’s perplexed look and said,
“Sean, the engines are sealed at our home port. This is similar to your nuclear engines in your submarines and ships. They require no ongoing maintenance, only monitoring until the next inspection cycle, which, for me, isn’t for another thirty-two of your years. There has never been a need to repair an engine during a mission in our very long history of exploration.”
Sean asked,
“How many engines are in there?”
“There are three identical engines. They are rotated in service weekly, but typically only one engine is used at a time despite I have the capability to use two at the same time to achieve extremely high speeds. I have not been challenged to use such speed thus far, and those speeds could be harmful to any biologicals on board.” He answered, then said,
“Let’s now go to the bridge.”
The walk to the bridge took another five minutes. The door to the bridge opened as they approached. Sean could see the door was like a bank vault door, thick with multiple anchor rods now retracted. Clearly this was a strongly defendable location. The room lights came on, in this tiered room at least, some of Sean’s expectations were realized as he looked at the front wall, it was covered with multiple large blank screens. There were several work stations on a lower tier with multiple monitors and large keyboard surface
s, all dark, arranged in front and on both sides of the room. Overlooking them in the center was what appeared to be a Captain’s chair with attached side consoles and a monitor on a swivel. Along the back wall was a row of three chairs for observers. Each chair had seat restraints which appeared to be retracted into the chairs.
At one time in its design and construction, it might have been anticipated that there would be a crew at all these stations as the ship transversed the cosmos. But now, the AI was omnipotent, and those stations were unused, but assumed to be ready. As Allister was providing a brief explanation of each of the Bridge stations one by one, his image suddenly froze amid a sentence, and all the bridge stations began lighting up all at once including the huge main screen on the front wall. Monitors began to display data, some began to display the outside star field, others showed an image of the ship itself in relation to the nearby celestial bodies, keyboard panels lit up. Several of the monitors had a red spot blinking in the middle of its display and were beeping.
“What’s going on Allister?” Sean asked,
“Is something wrong?”
Allister, once again animated, said quickly,
“Yes, Sean, it’s a Zakar war ship that just transitioned into our location, about 100 of your miles off our port beam! This is the same warlike race I mentioned before, that despite being a World Council member, does not heed the rules when they believe they can escape sanction. To transition in this close to another starship is deliberate, and usually viewed as an act of aggression.”
Allister’s hologram coloring shifted to a yellowish tone, as the Seeker’s AI processors came to near 76% occupancy with analysis, systems checks, and another massive, futile search for that irreplaceable, missing leadership code lost from the tiny meteorite strike months ago.
A burst of angry, guttural, undecipherable language came from the audio grilles of four of the bridge stations. It was a Zakar demand to surrender and permit boarding.
Allister responding to the untranslated communication, and in English said,
“This unit is a diplomatic representative of the Council of Worlds. To demand surrender and boarding is a violation of your World Charter and is refused.”
Those words were clear enough for Sean to understand the earlier untranslated signal from the Zakar war ship. For a few minutes nothing happened. The main screen had switched to a view of the other ship when communication had begun. In the middle of the screen was a ship completely unlike the Seeker ship. The other ship appeared to be made up of multiple square boxes attached together in a random alignment with the adjacent box. Various protrusions stuck out in several places that appeared to be weapon spouts of unknown capability. The one in the center of the ship as it sat broadside began to glow red.
Sean asked,
“What is it doing? Is it getting ready to fire a weapon at us?”
Allister just stood there looking toward the front screen,
“It is a plasma canon Sean, a very large one, and they are making it ready to fire at us. This may be the same ship that destroyed one of our Seekers and claimed another world. I believe they wish to seize this solar system, and your planet, before Earth is registered with the Council.
As they watched, a bright, large ball erupted from the canon and headed directly for the Seeker.
“Allister?” Sean said as he watched.
“Do something!”
Chapter Ten
Book One
Allister was unmoving as a mechanical voice announced through the embedded communicator behind Sean’s left ear,
“Code not found, instructions set, not found, Ship damage eminent, brace for impact”
Sean looked at the frozen image of Allister and shouted out commands staccato,
“Ship, shields up, full.”
“Evade incoming plasma”
“Activate defense status.”
“Spin up particle accelerator.”
“Open weapons ports.”
“Prepare to fire particle sling.”
The sudden evasive move of the ship almost threw Sean to the side, but he braced himself on the back of the captain’s chair as he saw the blue shield film envelope the ship on several of the monitors. Allister was still frozen. The plasma ball barely glanced off the side of the ship’s shields, jostling Sean again as the shields held. He could see on the main screen the Zakar ship was once again preparing to fire, this time with three cannons being filled. Allister was still motionless, so Sean once again seized command,
“Ship, send message to hostile ship in Zakar speech as follows.”
“Shut down weapons and leave this solar system immediately or be destroyed. One opportunity to comply, and one chance only.”
He could see the blinking on one of the consoles was mirroring his speech, so he assumed it was being sent to the hostile ship.
The Zakar cannons continued to build luminance in preparation of firing again. Sean could see this and ordered,
“Hostile ship target, lock.”
“Prepare to fire particle sling.”
“FIRE!”
A deep, brief ‘thrum’ could be heard as immense power was fed to the particle sling’s magnets, and a bright bolt left the ship like a brief flash, just below light speed and struck the Zakar ship amidships, leaving behind it a trail of sparks as the antimatter had passed through micro space dust. The middle of the Zakar ship disappeared in a huge flash of light and it was now split in two with a massive, following explosion in the rear section as their antimatter reservoir for their engines collapsed. The front section was sent hurtling off to the side and heading away from Earth’s solar system as gasses and fragments were streaming out of the broken one third section. All ability to control their motion or weapons was dead.
Sean watched the main monitor as the front section of the Zakar ship tumbled away into deep space and the small exploded fragments of the rear section headed in all directions, some bouncing harmlessly off the shields of the Seeker. A few minutes later, after most of the debris had passed them by Sean said,
“Scan for other spacecraft.” The ship’s mechanical voice responded in his ear communicator,
“No other ships are within detectable range of this ship.” Sean then ordered,
“Secure from defense status.”
“Close weapons ports.”
“Shut down the accelerator, maintain shields.”
“Orders acknowledged, complying.” The ship responded.
With one last instruction Sean said,
“Let all information regarding this defense conflict be written to the record.”
“Acknowledged.”
From the time the Zakar ship appeared and prepared to fire, Allister was frozen in place, now, once suddenly reanimated, he turned to Sean.
“Sean my operating system has a resolution subsystem to which I can refer decisions my code cannot resolve. Being attacked is one of those issues of critical decision making that my makers anticipated should be made by the resolution subsystem. That code was damaged in a recent micro meteor strike and I could not resolve an action need. Your commands were the only alternative, they were accepted since the ship’s code requires the ship to pursue best available commands to preserve passengers, the mission, and the ship itself. Clearly, yours were the appropriate ones.”
“Therefore, my code set is now being re-routed to accept your commands when this vessel or its mission is challenged. Analysis of the past few minutes show this ship would have received serious damage, likely hostile boarding, and a definite interruption of our mission which would affect both our worlds. Your assistance will weigh heavily in your application.”
Allister continued,
“Sean, I am not certain you understand what has happened here. The ship code has accepted you as the ‘commander in fact’ on issues undecided by the operating code. This is the first time a biological has been accepted by a Seeker ship’s AI as commander. In Earth terms, you have been accepted as ‘Captain’. As yo
u know, in your military such roles do not involve themselves in day to day operations. That will be true here, as Executive Officer, I will still manage the ship and its flight operations, but you may influence or alter the mission management to protect the ship and those within, Captain.”
Sean looked at Allister and said,
“Allister, this is neither a role I wanted, or expected, there is so much I do not know. You may be assured that I am willing to help in way I can to complete our mission safely. But you didn’t seem to have any difficulty in bringing the Secretary onboard, that was a big decision.”
“Yes, Captain that was an important decision, but the ship and its primary mission were never in danger of destruction, so the resolution subsystem was never needed.” Said Allister.
“My code set has now been modified and updated. Those changes will not be reversed since there obviously are hostile circumstances opposing our mission, and I cannot ignore a ready resource for leadership resolutions. I have dispatched another courier drone to my home planet covering the attack, your participation, and your new role. Included in that message was a request for a search vessel to track and recover the front section of the Zakar ship and to take into custody any found alive.”
Sean thought to himself,
“It just keeps coming. Wait until Doris hears about all this.”
He told Allister he would see him at dinner and left for his cabin wondering,
“Did Doris sleep through the whole thing?”