Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)

by Laurence Dahners

  Without waiting for an answer to that question, she glanced at Madison Arquette and Sheila Rhodes of the FBI. She continued, “Now the FBI takes over. As a side note, they don’t listen to Will Argant, because, after all, this went down on his watch. They bumble around, but days pass and they make essentially no progress.”

  Stockton sighed, “As if the SCDF hadn’t already made you look enough like the Three Stooges, while you’re being made into the laughingstock, Ell Donsaii, who I’ll remind you is at number one on the FBI’s most wanted list, swoops in to rescue me. I’m just waiting on tenterhooks for her to announce a press conference in which she will describe how she rescues me all by herself when thousands of you idiots were still trying to find your own asses. Talk about an embarrassment!”

  Several hands had gone up, but Stockton shook her hand disgustedly. “No, no don’t make excuses right now. I think they’d make me want to puke. What I want, is for you to go back to your offices, and each of you draft me two letters. One should be a letter of resignation, the other can offer whatever pathetic reasons you come up with for why you don’t think you should be fired.” She shook her head wearily, “I’ve got to call that little bitch Donsaii and humiliate myself by begging her not to embarrass us even further.”

  While the people in her office got up and began to shuffle out, Stockton sat down at the Resolute desk and buried her head wearily in her hands. To herself, she muttered, “So I’ve nearly fired members of my administration for calling Donsaii while she’s on the most wanted list,” she paused, “ now I’m gonna do it myself.” For a moment Stockton considered just having her AI put through the call, but then turned and asked her secretary to put it through for her. Somehow it didn’t feel quite so unclean having the call come from her office rather than herself.

  All too soon Deborah said, “I’ve got her on the line…”

  Stockton sighed, “Put her on,” she said, “Ms. Donsaii, I’m calling to thank you for rescuing me from those sons of bitches in the SCDF.” She paused, “I’m assuming you want some kind of quid pro quo. What did you have in mind?” She steeled herself for some outrageous demands. At the very least she expected that Donsaii would want to be off the most wanted list. At worst… only God could guess.

  Donsaii sounded startled, “Oh, no ma’am. No quid pro quo. I’m just glad you’re OK. Has the FBI caught those guys?”

  Stockton squeezed her eyes shut in loathing. It’s worse than I thought! She wants to make me sweat before she drops the other shoe. Grimly, she said, “Well, the three you killed, however you did that, those bastards didn’t get away. Neither did the one who appears to have shot himself with some kind of ricochet. Nor the ten you drugged,” she raised an eyebrow Donsaii couldn’t see, “however the hell you did that. The remaining six fled the house in several vehicles, two of which the FBI apprehended, catching four more.” Sounding disgusted, Stockton said, “Of course, that SOB Fallon is one of the two the FBI didn’t catch. They claim it’s only a matter of time, but I swear those boys have to have a lot of luck to find their own peckers.”

  “Killed?”

  “The ones in the kitchen.”

  “Oh,” Donsaii said quietly, sounding regretful.

  “Don’t sound like you’re sorry for them! The assholes were shooting at us!”

  “I know,” Donsaii said, still sounding depressed. “What about the other shooters from the golf course?” Donsaii asked, a harder tone back in her voice.

  “Only a matter of time,” Stockton repeated in a singsong voice, as if imitating somebody she had no respect for.

  “If they need help, I could give them some addresses.”

  Stockton narrowed her eyes, then, truly irritated to be asking, grated out, “How are you doing these things?”

  “Um, which things are you interested in Ma’am?”

  “How did you slice up the bastards in the kitchen for one? They found Taser darts in a lot of those guys. You didn’t have a Taser. How the hell did you shoot ‘em? They were drugged up with some kind of short acting tranquilizer. How did you do that? Once again, you blocked doorways with some kind of balloon or force field. I would have said balloon, but the FBI claims they can’t find any remnants of balloons. Do you have a force field you haven’t told us about? How the hell do you fly?”

  “Oh,” Donsaii said regretfully, “I’m afraid I don’t want to answer those questions.”

  “Shit,” Stockton said resignedly. “And what do you want? Let me guess, you’re planning a press conference to embarrass the FBI with how you rescued me when they couldn’t.”

  “Oh, no Ma’am, I would never do that.”

  Stockton sighed, “Why did you rescue me then?”

  Quietly, sounding resigned to the difficulty of explaining a, to her simple, concept, Donsaii said, “You’re my president. You were in trouble. The FBI was having difficulty finding you… but I could.” She paused again, then continued, “In addition you had a bomb around your neck that I didn’t think anyone else could remove safely. Since I believed that I was the only one who could do it, I felt I had a moral obligation to do so.”

  “Oh yeah, how in all the hells did you get that bomb off me? The FBI says removing that bomb without killing me should have been impossible! In addition, I’m missing some hair and part of the collar of my shirt. The FBI says they don’t know what happened to that either.”

  Sorry, those are more questions I don’t want to answer.”

  Stockton let out a long suffering sigh, “Well, I suppose I owe you my life. When you’re ready to call in whatever favor you’re angling for, let me know. If it’s not too outrageous, I’ll come through.” She cut the connection in irritation.

  Stockton sat staring out the window for a minute, then said, “Deborah, tell those stupid…” after a pause to grit her teeth she continued, “Sorry, tell the FBI that if they’ll call Donsaii, she can give them addresses for some of the SCDF,” she turned and looked back down at her desk, “somehow…” she muttered quietly enough that Deborah wouldn’t hear it.

  ***

  Phil smiled as the server set down his plate with a sirloin and French fries. Carol already had her salmon. He felt a little nervous because Carol didn’t often suggest they splurge on a nice restaurant, just the two of them. He’d learned that when she did, she often had something serious she wanted to talk about. The last time it had been about buying a house. He hadn’t been sure that a house would be a good idea when they were both hoping to get assigned to a long mission, but she’d already mustered all of her arguments and he’d had no preparation.

  She’d gotten her way.

  This time when he looked up from his steak, he found her staring at him over the rim of her wine glass. With a certain sense of resignation, he said, “Yes?”

  She carefully set the glass down and said, “I got an interesting bit of news today.”

  Phil thought to himself, that doesn’t sound like trouble, and picked up his fork and steak knife. “What was that?”

  “It seems that a certain astronaut couple is close enough to the top of the list for the Mars mission that they are almost certain to go.”

  Phil’s eyes widened as excitement flooded over him, “Us?”

  Carol nodded, but not with the broad smile that he had expected.

  Phil said, “But that’s great,” he paused, then asked querulously, “isn’t it?”

  She nodded again, slowly, consideringly. “Yes, yes it is,” she said slowly, “except, I’m not quite sure how we got to the top of the list? There were quite a few other couples, who, by the way the rules were written, should have come out ahead of us.”

  “Uh, maybe they dropped out?” he said, then winced when he realized she would have already checked that.

  “Nope.” She said, definitively, indicating she knew for sure as he should’ve expected.

  “Maybe something else went in our favor?”

  “Yeaaah,” she said drawing the word out, “When I talked to Maggie, she
said, ‘Maybe Phil talked to Ell Donsaii?’”

  Phil grimaced, “Well, I did send her a little message about how much we wanted to get on this mission. You know she was a classmate of mine at the academy?”

  Carol pointed her fork at him, “I find it hard to believe that she’d throw over the whole selection process for a,” she made little quote marks in the air with her fingers, “classmate.”

  Phil shrugged, “Her company’s funding the entire thing. She wouldn’t have to throw anything over, she’d only have to say a word or two to make it happen.”

  Carol leaned forward, staring intently into Phil’s eyes, “Phil Zabrisk, I think she was more than just a classmate. Are you telling me that that was all she was?”

  Phil swallowed. He’d sworn he wouldn’t lie to Carol. He realized that he’d been skating pretty close to the edge of it already. “Yeah, we were very good friends,” he said hoarsely. “The best. She was my only real love before you.” He frowned, “I’ve been afraid to say anything about it to you. I don’t know why, you’re the one I love now. But she’s still my friend. I suspect… I suspect she’d do a lot more than fiddle the Mars mission priorities for me if I asked. I probably shouldn’t have asked, but we’ve wanted to go so badly.”

  Carol studied him a minute longer, then said in a serious tone, “You’re telling me that I married one of Ell Donsaii’s castoffs?”

  With a sinking feeling, Phil sheepishly said, “Yeah.”

  Carol leaned forward, still intently looking Phil in the eye, then picked up her wine glass and held it up. “Well,” she grinned, “Donsaii screwed up.” She winked, “I got the best of that deal!” She nodded at him, “Thanks for getting us on the mission.”

  Phil absently clinked his beer glass against her wineglass, then said incredulously, “You were layin’ for me!”

  “Yeah,” her eyes twinkled, “and we’re both glad you didn’t lie to me. Actually,” she grinned, “I’m pretty proud to have married the guy even Ell Donsaii couldn’t land. I’ll be bragging about that to all my friends.”

  Phil studied her for a moment, then decided that Ell had never actually “dumped” him, so it wouldn’t be lying to let Carol keep thinking that Ell just couldn’t keep him. Mentally he shrugged, he wasn’t sure Carol actually believed what she’d just said anyway. “Carol,” he said with intense feeling, “I had a few dates with her, and I’d be lying if I tried to say that she isn’t amazing. But, I love you. Now, and forever more. That’s what really matters,” he grinned, “Well, that and going to Mars!” he held up his beer glass for another toast…

  ***

  Viveka eeled joyfully down the long tube that joined the various habitat modules. ET Resources had been undertaking a program to rearrange the modules somewhat. The initial setup had had the large weightless modules arranged longitudinally in a chain. They had had hubs between them which the living modules spun around.

  As the chain of modules grew longer it became more inconvenient to have the large weightless modules actually be a part of the chain. First of all, some of the module owners didn’t want traffic passing through their modules from one part of the chain to the other. Second, the modules were long from one end to the other making the chain much longer. So, ET Resources had begun putting the large weightless modules on hubs as well. This let them shorten the chain at each of these sites by the difference between the length and the width of the modules. It also let them put several weightless modules at one location on the hub.

  Of course, moving the living modules transversely to get them closer together at the new hubs could have been quite a hassle. They were constantly swinging around the hubs to produce the centrifugal forces that simulated gravity in the living areas. However they all had multiple ported jets scattered about their surfaces anyway. The jets were used to spin them up to speed and to correct for any deflections caused by meteoroid impacts. Those same jets could even be used in the event that a living module broke free from its hub and shot away. The jets could slow it down and eventually return it to the orbit of the rest of the habitats. Of course, using the jets to move the modules while they were spinning rapidly around the hubs was a very complex problem. However, that was just the kind of problem that AIs excelled at.

  Allosci’s old weightless module, the one they had been spinning graphene in, had recently been moved to a hub. Allosci had paid a fee to retain the other five spots on the hexagonal hub for themselves and just had their second weightless module installed directly across the hub from their old one. Viveka was up at the habitat supervising installation of a set of her VLGCs in the module.

  It had been a long day, but the installations so far had gone extremely well. They had emptied the 747 space plane of its VLGCs fairly quickly and sent it over to someone else’s manufacturing module to pick up a load of microgravity products too large to easily send back down to earth through a port. Allosci’s graphene cables, of course, were simply spooled back down to earth through a port, but the large objects being built in the VLGCs would need to be shipped back down in 747s as well.

  So far, Viveka and her crew had only temporarily tied down the VLGCs. Tomorrow they would more securely fasten them into place. Surprisingly, once the VLGCs were secured Viveka and her team would essentially be done. Even though she had designed them, it still boggled her mind to some extent that the VLGCs didn’t have to be “hooked up” or anything. Ports installed back down on earth brought in the electrical connections and delivered whichever carbon containing gases—usually methane—filled the chamber and served as a source for the deposition of graphend.

  In fact, even as Viveka headed out for dinner and a well-deserved rest, one of the VLGCs had started a test run depositing graphend on a series of gossamer forms to create rotor blades for lifting craft. Assuming the blades went well, the rest of the VLGCs could start turning out product as soon as they had been securely fastened into place tomorrow.

  As she’d been doing at the end of each workday, Viveka turned right at one of the new large hubs and started down a long tube that took off from that hub. As opposed to most of the tubes that extended a long distance from the main habitat throughway, tubes which spun to provide gravity to living modules, this one did not spin, so she remained weightless. Three hundred meters out on the end of this single stationary tube, ET Resources had placed a large transparent bubble. As she approached, Viveka slowed herself with some gentle squeezes on the cord she was traveling along. She arrived in the bubble proper moving very slowly, then grabbed the joystick at her waist and used it to gently nudge herself out into the bubble. As usual a few other people hung silently in the bubble staring out at the vistas of space.

  Viveka quietly asked her AI to feed Beethoven’s ninth symphony to her ears as she drifted gently in the bubble. A slight residual rotation caused the myriad stars to slowly pan across her field of view. She resisted the temptation to let her eyes drift too quickly to the right to drink in the stunning sight of the earth. Instead she allowed its blue and white majesty to cut gradually across her view like an oblique horizon. They were over the day-night terminator so half the globe was dark, but a storm on the dark side was flashing its clouds brilliant white with lightning bolts. She let her gaze drift up toward the pole where the aurora borealis was visible as a filmy green curtain.

  The bliss Viveka felt whenever she hung weightless in this transparent bubble and gazed out on the magnificence of space never failed to prickle her skin with wonderment.

  After she’d been hanging there for about five minutes, she started at a touch on her ankle. Looking down she felt a smile build on her face, “Gary!” she said dreamily.

  Tugging gently at her ankle, he pulled himself so that his head was at about the level of her waist, but remained with his head tilted up to look at her. “I know that the tradition is different in your country, but in mine the custom is for the man to kneel before his lady and offer her a ring in hopes that she will agree to marry him.” He shrugged, “I can’t knee
l here in this weightlessness,” he said, producing a ring, “but I hope that you’ll agree to marry me nonetheless?”

  Viveka reached down and tugged on the front of his jumpsuit, pulling him up to her. Throwing her arms around him, and hugging him tightly, she whispered in his ear, “Of course, there’s nothing I want more in all the worl…” her eyes darted back and forth at the tear blurred stars she saw over his shoulder, and she changed the last word, “universe.”

  ***

  President Stockton looked at Madison Arquette and Sheila Rhodes of the FBI. “So, the addresses Donsaii gave you worked out?”

  Arquette and Rhodes looked at each other a moment, then Rhodes said, “Yes Ma’am. As you know, Fallon proved to be at one of the addresses. We’ve found men fitting the profile at the other addresses as well. We have accumulated enough evidence to convict some and at least circumstantial evidence on the others. She was very helpful.”

  “And have you figured out how she knew where they were?”

  “No Ma’am.”

  Exasperatedly, “Have you figured out how she did any of the other impossible things she did?”

  “No Ma’am. Well, our theory for one of them is still that she blocked the doors with graphene balloons. After all Allosci, the makers of graphene, is a part of D5R. However, we’re not sure how she would have removed the graphene balloons from the scene like she appears to have done. There doesn’t seem to be any remnant of graphene in the areas she blocked. Well, actually, just above the stair that she blocked with a balloon we found thousands of tiny objects about the size of grains of sand that are at least partly made of graphene. Analysis also suggests they may have had tiny ports in them. They seem to be partly melted as if someone ran too much current through them.” She shrugged, “How these tiny granules could have formed a large balloon is not clear at all. Besides, we didn’t find any of the tiny fragments near the downstairs doorway you said was blocked.”