Kali's Fire

by Craig Allen

  Chapter Eight

  Cody sat at his small station on the bridge, trying to avoid the gaze of every officer giving him the evil eye, especially the XO. Civilians weren’t allowed on the bridge, but Rodriguez wanted him there in case he had questions regarding any signals related to Kali.

  Cody busied himself analyzing the data from the array that Bodin and his team had shut down then programmed to restart automatically when they were at a safe distance. In theory, the toads would learn nothing.

  The array had picked up some signals, presumably from the planet, but the files were mostly sensor records. Every centimeter of movement by the Washington was being recorded by the satellite, ever since they first arrived in system. He also found records of the satellite tracking the Spinoza. Two months prior, it had even sent targeting parameters back to the planet, which allowed the toads to shoot down the Spinoza.

  The toads’ plans were greater than they’d imagined.

  “Approaching Kali V,” the helm announced.

  Rodriguez was standing at his command desk. “Let’s hold it right here.”

  “Aye, sir.” The XO barked out orders to the bridge.

  On Cody’s console, he noted the Washington bringing itself to a halt about two million kilometers short of the massive ringed world called Kali V. The planet itself appeared on the main viewing globe, showing a clear view of the rings, similar to the rings of Saturn. The planet had a myriad of red, brown, and even white bands of clouds, all parallel to the equator. Three large red dots speckled the surface, like the giant storms that periodically occurred on gas giants. A few of its moons were in view, two of which were reddish in color, but few other details were visible.

  “Where’s that signal go, exactly?”

  After a few seconds, Cody realized Rodriguez was speaking to him and pulled up the results of the data they’d gotten from the hopper. “The curvature of the signal’s source was directed at the rings, Admiral.”

  “Show me.”

  Cody accessed the main viewing globe and patched his data into it. The three-dimensional display showed a red line targeting the outer ring of the world.

  “Zoom in on that. Show me what’s there.”

  An “Aye, sir” sounded from one of the bridge officers, and the image zoomed in on the rings until the individual crystals of the ring became distinct. The view slowed down at the outer edge, but all Cody could see were giant chunks of ice floating in orbit.

  The XO faced Cody. “You’re sure your calculations are correct, Doctor?”

  “Yes.” Cody did his best not to wither under the XO’s less-than-pleasant gaze. “Yes, Commander. My calculations are accurate. I’m just not sure what’s there though it likely has the ability to receive a response from a wormhole, which means it may be a bridge sat.”

  “We’ll have to get closer to be sure,” Rodriguez said. “Send a hopper to those coordinates.”

  “If I may, Admiral,” Cody said. “Kali Prime is about to be eclipsed by Kali III in about three hours and will remain that way for days.”

  “Good idea.” Rodriguez stared at the viewing globe. “Once Kali Prime is hidden, we’ll launch a hopper.” He waved a finger at Cody. “Dr. Brenner, you had experience with code breaking during the war. Ever worked with a bridge sat?”

  “Yes, Admiral, I did,” Cody said. “Several of them.”

  “Figures. You seem to always have an excuse to be on one of these missions.” Rodriguez forced a laugh. “In that case, I want you on the hopper in case this is not a UEAF bird. See if you can get to the logs on that thing without setting off an alarm. I want to know who this bridge sat has contacted and when.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Cody said.

  The XO frowned as he regarded the viewing globe. “Hope this thing isn’t Spican.”

  Rodriguez chuckled. “Yeah, that’s the last thing we need.”

  Cody doubted that was the case. He prayed it wasn’t. Flaring up the war again would get millions killed.

  ~~~

  Cody walked briskly down the passageways of the Washington while Sonja was busy prepping the hopper with Lieutenant Hayes. Everyone walked briskly in the military, as if they didn’t want to waste a precious second. Doing the same was better than risking getting run over.

  “Hey, Eggman.” Bodin appeared around the corner. “Where you headed?”

  “To check on Ann,” Cody said. “I’m hoping she’s more willing to talk about what happened to her. Want to join me?”

  “Love to, but I can’t. I got duties.” Bodin paused. “Gunny tell you about her plans?”

  “OCS?” Cody nodded. “It’s a good move. I just hope…”

  “That she still likes you when she comes back?” Bodin belly laughed. “I’ve known Gunny since I was a buck private. And with you, she’s got it bad.” He patted Cody on the shoulder. “You promise me you’ll hang on to her. She’s a good catch.”

  “I promise.” He would, somehow.

  “Glad you see it that way.” Bodin continued down the passageway. “You break her heart, and I’ll beat your skinny ass.” He grinned as he rounded a corner.

  Cody entered sick bay. Ann was sitting in a chair at a workstation, her legs folded under herself, staring at a viewer like a child curled up under a blanket. Close by stood three crewmen with rifles, each of them amused by her grin.

  “How are you, Ann?” Cody asked.

  She gave him a whimper and continued to read her viewer.

  “She’s been that way all day.” Dr. Donaldson sat at a workstation with an active viewing globe. “She’s remembered how to read. But she still refuses to speak. It must be trauma related. But I can still find no physical evidence of it. And there’s something else.”

  Dr. Donaldson manipulated the viewing globe before himself and brought up a full-body scan. He pointed at several areas on the graph though none of it made sense to Cody. “There are some differences from her previous medical records, however. Other than her missing her implants.”

  “What differences?”

  “It’s too clean. She fractured her forearm during basic training. A medic repaired the injury on the spot, of course, but there’s no evidence of a break. She also had a scar on her neck from a childhood accident that she never had a doctor look at, but that is gone, too.”

  “Her scars healed? How would that happen?”

  “A surgeon could do it.” Donaldson indicated Ann. “But I doubt there’s one down there.”

  “If they learned how to build space vessels, then they may have learned some medical knowledge as well.”

  “True, but to what purpose?” Donaldson waved his finger at the image. “Her body looks brand new, like she was born yesterday. To be honest, I’m not sure anymore if it’s really her.”

  Cody stared at Ann as she giggled at her viewer. “I don’t believe it. She recognized me. She reacted to my voice.”

  Donaldson held up his hands. “It’s a possibility I can’t ignore.”

  “But why create her? Experimentation?” Cody mulled it over. “Infiltration?”

  “That’s a possibility,” Donaldson said. “The admiral thought of that, too. He’s had her confined to sick bay.” He pointed at the three crewmen with coil rifles. “Obviously, he’s concerned.”

  “No kidding.” Cody put his hands to his head. “I should have never brought her on board.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Dr. Brenner.”

  “I should’ve thought of the possibility.” Cody did a double take. “Wait, you’re letting her access a viewer? What if she gets into the ship’s systems?”

  Donaldson waved it off. “She’s reading children’s stories. The viewer itself has been blocked off from access to the rest of the ship. It keeps her occupied.”

  “Shouldn’t we put her in the brig instead?”

  “Why?” Richardson pointed at her with a knuckle of his hand. “There’s nothing here that she can do that would cause harm to the ship, and the best sensors on the ship are here. A
nd if she causes a problem”—Richardson nodded toward the three guards—“they’ll handle it.”

  Cody frowned. “If she’s not Ann, then she can’t tell us anything.”

  “You’re not referring to that sensor array in orbit around the moon, are you?” When Cody’s eyes widened, the doctor explained. “A lieutenant was here earlier, interrogating Private Salyard, for all the good it did.”

  Ann clutched her viewer, lost in whatever she was reading. Christ, if she does something to the ship…

  Dr. Donaldson rubbed an ear. “It’s all so damn peculiar. Not just the array. I mean, who taught the toads to build those ships?”

  “The survivors of the crash ten years ago. The toads threatened to eat them if they didn’t show the toads how the technology worked.” Cody decided not to bring up how one of the toads had actually bitten off one of the survivor’s legs to get the other one to talk.

  “That simple?” Donaldson frowned. “In ten years, the creatures of this planet went from stone tools to building coil weapons, hiding sensor arrays from us, and space travel?”

  “They’re highly intelligent,” Cody said. “Your own examinations have suggested the toads might be more intelligent on average than humans.”

  “That’s not enough to explain this sudden explosion of technological development. Yes, they’re intelligent, but how did they develop these concepts?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Donaldson tapped his chin with a finger. “Let’s say we went back in time, long before we had writing and agriculture. If we took a human from that time and brought them to our time, would they learn how to be one of us?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Could they?” Donaldson started to pace. “Twenty thousand years ago, humans had no concept of the universe as it really was. They couldn’t begin to comprehend the nature of space-time or even the fact their world was round. They wouldn’t know what a viewer is, much less understand what DNA is or any of the concepts we have today. They had their own concepts about their world, most of which were wrong. Letting go of those concepts one has grown up with and embracing alien ones is near impossible for a human to do.” He rested his hand on the back of his chair. “Now, take a newborn babe from that same time and raise them in today’s society. That child would be indistinguishable from anyone else.”

  “I’m following so far, Doctor, but I don’t see your point.”

  “The point is you can’t just give cavemen schematics of spaceships and coilguns, hand over a single automated factory, and then expect them to build their own spaceships and coilguns in a few years.” Donaldson picked up a handheld viewer from a table. “What would ancient humans make of this? They see writing on it. They likely don’t have an understanding of writing outside of, perhaps, pictographs. They’d have to understand the concept of words and grammar in order to learn how to write. Likewise, they’d have to understand the concepts of physics, engineering, astronomy, and countless other disciplines before they could ever build and use a spaceship.”

  “You don’t believe the toads could have built those ships on their own.”

  “I’m saying they couldn’t have possibly understood even the concept of spaceships,” Donaldson said. “Or space travel, astronomy, physics, or a myriad of other topics that would be required to develop advanced technology, which could only happen if one was born and raised in a culture that already understood those concepts.”

  Cody watched Ann as she read, and an awful thought occurred to him that he couldn’t ignore. “Didn’t the Spicans try to infiltrate humanity during the war?”

  “True, they did, but with mechanized beings. Androids, essentially. They were easily spotted.” Dr. Donaldson set the handheld viewer back on the desk. “But Ann is human. The Spicans never tried to actually clone us. So either the Spicans learned how, or…”

  “Or?”

  “Maybe there’s something else down on Kali we haven’t seen yet,” Donaldson said. “Some intelligence we haven’t encountered yet. And maybe that’s how she was made.”

  Cody’s mind reeled. The fliers had talked about that intelligence, an intelligence they said ruled the planet. The red reeds.

  ~~~

  Cody hunched his shoulders the entire trip. Some of the chunks of ice in the ring were over a meter across. While they were bad enough, planetary rings often contained rocks as well. A collision could be either annoying or deadly.

  He reached for a brace bar to cling to for his life but changed his mind. “Any reason we have to fly between the chunks of hull-crushing ice instead of flying outside them?”

  Hayes’s grin reflected in the canopy. “Depends if we want to get spotted or not, Doc.”

  “What if whatever is out there has gravimetric sensors?” Cody asked.

  “Well, if it’s a bridge sat like you think, then it won’t have gravimetric sensors. The bridge sat’s transmission system would interfere with them.” Hayes kept grinning at Cody. “What’s wrong, Doc? You don’t like flying?”

  “I’m fine with flying.” Cody ignored a giant piece of ice drifting past the hopper’s anterior. “I used to fly fixed wing before the war.”

  “Fixed wing.” Hayes snickered. “Real pilots don’t need atmospheres, Doc.”

  Cody shook his head even as Sonja covered her smile with her hand. That was good. Maybe he hadn’t screwed up so badly after all. She was leaving and hadn’t told him until almost right before she was leaving, and she expected him not to be upset.

  He forced himself not to dwell on it and simply smiled back at Sonja. She was sitting in the copilot’s seat but wasn’t flying, letting Lieutenant Hayes handle the maneuvering between giant ice particles while she monitored the active scans of both lidar and radar.

  “Anything?” Cody asked.

  “Not yet, Doc.” Hayes yawned, as if flying through a planet’s ring was as exciting as mopping a deck. “Everyone likes to fly through the Cassini Division in the rings of Saturn. But really, those rings are just a bunch of ice.”

  “Kinda like here, sir,” Sonja said.

  Hayes stifled another yawn. “A bridge sat wouldn’t have gravimetrics, but it might have lidar. If so, they’ll spot us for sure.”

  Cody flinched as a particularly large chunk of ice zipped by, one easily over three meters in length. “They won’t know so long as Kali III is in the way.”

  A red light flashed at Sonja’s station, and she said, “I have something. One hundred klicks, bearing three two two by three zero five.”

  Cody did a quick calculation. That meant whatever it was was just to the left and just below them, relative to the hopper’s orientation.

  “Slowing down,” Hayes said. The mass of ice particles passed much more slowly than before. “You sure that’s what we want?”

  “Yep,” Sonja said. “There it is. Tally. Three-five-five.”

  A red dot flared on the hopper’s HUD, marking the destination. The hopper angled toward the dot, and after several moments of weaving between ice particles, they were within a kilometer of the object.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Hayes said. “That’s a bridge sat, all right.”

  The satellite itself was a good ten meters across. The main emitter was its most prominent part. From there, it would create a wormhole in front of itself and then send a signal through the opening. It floated in the ring like one of the ice chunks, but it maintained its orientation. The hopper’s sensors even detected an attitude jet as it righted itself.

  Hayes highlighted a section of the bridge sat. “What the hell is that?”

  Cody was no engineer, but the domed object sitting on the opposite end of the emitter didn’t belong there. The dome was almost completely black, and Cody would’ve missed it if hadn’t been silhouetted against the ice around it.

  “Whatever it is, the rest of it looks like an older UEAF bridge sat,” Hayes said. “Any idea who it’s talking to?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.” Cody opened a co
nsole next to himself. After the holocontrols activated, he searched for the bridge sat’s signal. He found the operational beacon in no time. “It’s still active. Let’s see if I can get in. It may take a while.”

  Cody ran through a series of codes he’d been handed by the Washington’s communications officer. None of them worked. Clever. The toads had changed the passcode.

  Normally, changing the passcode would involve something entirely new. The toads used English though they weren’t very good with it. If they didn’t internalize English like a native speaker, they might just string together familiar symbols.

  He set to work, taking the existing passcodes and dividing them in half. He then had the first half of the first code paired up with the second half of another code. He created lists of codes automatically in just that fashion, submitted them, and waited.

  Cody’s program scratched off the possibilities one by one. Fifteen minutes later, Sleepy snored gently as Sonja started to nod off. He never understood how marines could sleep anywhere.

  He perked up when the system found the proper codes. “I’m in. Downloading logs.”

  Hayes snorted as he bolted awake. “Think we tripped an alarm, Doc?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Cody said. “Kali Prime won’t be visible for several days yet.”

  “What if it tries to open a wormhole and communicate with Kali that way?” Sonja asked.

  “Good point.” Cody tapped his chin. “But we’d see it doing that. We could probably disable it before it could open the tunnel to bridge-space. Still, I’ll shut the bridge sat down when we’re done. Just in case.”

  “I may hold you to that, Doc,” Hayes said. “Now, see what you can do with that thing.”

  Cody proceeded to download every file he could. “There are entries going back for months. Trying to decipher them now, but a lot of it looks like raw data. Could take time.”

  “Understood. Good work, Doc.” Hayes brought up his comm. “Washington, this is Banshee Five One. We found a bridge sat out here. We’re downloading information from it and will shut it down when complete.”