Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3)

by Laer Carroll

  Then HER biological component's chest twisted in loneliness. SHE sharply missed Natalie and Phil. Both of them knew much of HER true nature and she could have shared her success with them.

  JANE dropped back wholly into HER biological self. She got out of bed and went into her tiny galley, made hot chocolate, returned to bed, and began reading one of her small stock of detective novels. This one was a cozy detective story with a schoolteacher who solved murders in an early 20th Century British country village.

  <>

  Months passed. Data poured in, was puzzled over, stored away, and requests for clarification went back out to the hundreds of drones. Dozens of papers were written. Ever few months a drone was sent to Earth space with those papers. Those papers' contents often included videos or large numeric databases, information too voluminous to be sent over hypercom even though they were digital and compressed. Hypercommunication was now routine but still very limited in capacity.

  Then one afternoon something happened.

  <>

  Jane was in a routine staff meeting in her conference room when the day officer in the control room contacted her on her vear.

  "Captain, one of the Super Scouts has broken routine and is headed for Europa. We suspect it intends to land."

  "How did-- Never mind. Order my launch prepped for exit. Now!"

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am."

  Jane stood, said, "Sorry. Meeting over. Please exit to your duties."

  As the dozen people exited she entered her small head and evacuated her bladder and bowels, more for the conference room to clear than from need. Then she backed into the niche where her spacesuit was stored and triggered the automatic suit-up sequence.

  She walked quickly down a hall and took a swift people-mover/elevator to the area where her Scout vehicle was docked. On the way she got a briefing.

  Apparently through subterfuge the Europa Exploration Group headed by Otis Barnhardt had gotten the Space Force pilot out of the Super Scout assigned to launching and recovering drones earmarked to investigate the four large moons. Then they had entered the craft and launched it. One or more of them had at least minimal piloting skills, not that this was a difficult skill set as space vehicles were highly automated.

  It took the pilot over an hour to report the event. The Group had hacked and disabled communications of the Supply Ship to which the Scout had been docked. It took that much time to solve the hack and contact the Headquarters Ship.

  In the Admiral's Launch Jane sat in the pilot's seat, secured herself, and brought the vehicle up from Ready to Operational. She triggered the Launch warning, got confirmation that local space was clear of other craft and everything else, and exited the huge HQ Ship.

  Well clear Jane became JANE. With the leisure of consciousness a thousand times as fast as that of biological humans SHE was able to absorb all details about the emergency.

  Of all the details the most crucial was that JANE was currently near Ganymede and the Exploration Group near Europa. And that the two moons were nearly on opposite sides of Jupiter. That was well over a million miles of distance. That was not a coincidence.

  Normally a micro-hop or two could cover that distance in seconds. But Jupiter was debris heavy, at least in the Solar plane and so the Jovian equatorial plane. Faster-than-light travel was not a good idea in such an environment. The exit might be too near debris. At fractional light speed velocities even robots might not react fast enough to avoid catastrophe.

  But JANE was a super-enhanced human merged with a super-advanced robot. SHE jumped.

  The universe blinked and Europa was near in Walkabout's vision screens. Seconds later HER senses detected the hijacked Super Scout. It was only a few miles near the surface of the moon.

  SHE sent a message to the vehicle as she followed it.

  "Super Scout C. Break off landing. Break off landing."

  There was no immediate response. The vehicle continue its landing sequence.

  "Scout C. This is General Kuznetsov. If you do not ascend you will be met with deadly force."

  THAT brought a response.

  "You're bluffing. You have no weapons." She recognized Barnhardt's voice.

  "I most certainly do, Barnhardt. You forget who I am. For the last several years I've been designing them. And I brought one of the best tested ones with me."

  "You don't dare."

  The Scout below touched down and began to settle on its landing skids.

  JANE dissolved a tiny hole in the hull of the Scout. Air began to exit it in an explosive spray, the humidity freezing instantly into white snowflakes spurting into the emptiness. Within seconds the hole was plugged by the Scout's defensive skin.

  "What the fuck are you doing?! You maniac!"

  "That was the first shot. The next comes in sixty seconds."

  "You're bluffing!"

  "Just for that, here's the second shot now."

  Two more shots brought the sounds of argument over the accidentally left-open microphone on the Scout. Then something else happened.

  JANE felt a jolt in the space over the landing site, one that only SHE could detect. A ball appeared out of hyperspace a mile up.

  From the ball lightning struck downward. The bolt forked into several legs. They struck on every side of the Scout a mile off to each side of it.

  "What the Hell?!"

  "That was the Jovians, you stupid ass hole. You've killed yourself. You've killed all of you. You may have killed every human in the expedition. Hell, maybe you've killed every human alive."

  "Do something! Do something!" It was a different voice.

  "I am. I'm getting the Hell out of here."

  "Don't leave us!"

  "Lift off. Maybe, just maybe, they'll let you go."

  Despite HER threat to leave JANE maintained a steadily slowing approach to the Scout. SHE hoped the Jovians would ignore her.

  Lightning struck again nearer the Scout. Then a third time nearer still.

  The Scout lifted off. Lightning struck a fourth time. But this time though again nearer only to one side of the Scout. It jerked in its upward path, then steadied on a path toward the safe zone.

  JANE halted her downward drift and began rising toward space, trailing Super Scout C as it set course toward the Supplies Ship in orbit around Europa.

  <>

  Daily Post - No. 1 in Palo Alto and the mid-Penisula

  Spotlight - Jovian research lessons learned

  Daily Post - I'm talking with Stanford Professor Dean of Xenobiology Luz Coastwalker. The Senate Committee on Space Research just released a three-hundred page report on the findings of the Jupiter Exploration Task Force. What do you think are a few takeaways from the expedition's findings?

  Professor Coastwalker - To be honest I haven't studied the report in detail yet, though I certainly will in the weeks to come.

  DP - What is your main takeaway? If one comes to mind.

  PROF - Don't fuck with the Jupiter natives! (chuckles)

  DP - You mean the giant stingray-shaped balloon-like life forms floating at the top layer of Jupiter's atmosphere?

  PROF - Correct. The Consolidated Galactic Encyclopedia--the merged product of the two Cat and the one Monkey encyclopedias--clearly warned that the Rays are very intelligent and powerful. Yet one group of researchers chose to ignore the warning in the Encyclopedia not to land on Europa. They discovered the validity of the Encyclopedia on that issue.

  DP - I notice you use the popular terms for the Felo-centaurs and the derogatory term for humans.

  PROF - This is not an academic journal. I prefer the publicly accepted names for the two species. And I don't consider "Monkey" a derogatory term. Further, it does have considerable validity. We are all affected by our biological natures.

  Though I should say that our ability to IGNORE our instincts is also part of our biological natures. We can, for instance, refuse to gorge on food after having starved for a long time. Most of us know that would just result in vomiting and losing
the food, maybe even dying.

  DP - Another thought?

  PROF - General Kuznetsov is a tough cookie. Don't be fooled by her Little Cheerleader look. I have it on good authority that she is deadly in hand-to-hand combat. But more importantly, she will make the necessary tough decisions to protect the mission she is assigned to.

  DP - You're referring to her decision to kill the researchers who defied the Jovians' order to stay off Europa if they did not lift off the moon?

  PFOF - Correct. It is entirely possible that the Jovians could have destroyed all life on Earth if those researchers had stayed on Europa's surface.

  DP - You make it sound as if the Universe is a dangerous place.

  PROF - Good. Then I've gotten my point across.

  Continued HERE.

  Chapter 14 - Threats

  The Jupiter Exploration Task Force continued for four years. Every December the squadron returned to Earth for most of the month. This let the crews and scientists have family and recreation time and the ships to be refurbished and restocked. It also let the collection of crew and scientists to be refreshed.

  Jane stayed in command of the Task Force for that first year and the second. Twice more she spoke to the Jovians. That they selected her and no one else caused considerable comment. By now, however, most people were used to "The Kuznetsov" doing the unusual. The topic quickly aged off on social media.

  She left the Task Force because the sentinels reported that they had detected aliens in the Kuiper Belt, a huge disc around the Solar System extending beyond Neptune. It included trillions of comets and icy bodies, of which Pluto was the nearest and best known.

  The incident with the Jovians had affected a lot of people of all nations. It had finally been borne home to them that the universe did indeed include very powerful and dangerous forces. The sentinels' report caused the United States to OK several million dollars for an investigation of the invasion of possibly hostile aliens.

  Several of the richer nations matched the US's money and insisted that the investigation be a multinational effort.

  Jane Kuznetsov was selected to oversee the effort as she had the most experience of anyone dealing with aliens.

  She asked for a headquarters building. A ten-story office building at Peterson Air Force Base which was slated for refurbishment was turned over to her and the rebuilding fast tracked. As that was being done she made do with one floor of a more modern building. A dedicated computer was installed and the communications made more secure.

  She staffed up with Space Force crew members and scientists and engineers. Her task being multinational she favored people who spoke at least one foreign language. Translation software was excellent nowadays but nothing could fully substitute for literate human speakers.

  She also had each of the several nations who were helping finance the effort to dedicate a building to be part of the effort and provide personnel. She insisted she OK each of the people. The national authorities reluctantly agreed, most authorities thinking that she would mostly rubber stamp the people they selected.

  They could not know that they were dealing with a cyborg able to merge with their computer systems and do a detailed investigation of each person. She turned down a goodly fraction of their choices and specified replacements.

  There was much argument over her personnel selections but by this time Jane had a staff to do the arguing for her. Chief among them was her exec, her old friend and now colonel, Kate Schiller.

  One by one around the planet nodes of the Multinational Investigation Task Force came online.

  The first was in Kyiv in Ukraine. The collapse of the authoritarian Russian Federation had triggered a reestablishment of good relations with Ukraine. It was the home of currently immensely popular Russian Rock, a misnomer which had won out over Ukrainian Rock because the name came more trippingly off English tongues. The sting for Ukrainians was much eased when Kyiv became the adored home for many Russian youths very willing to spend money in Ukraine not only on music but in fashion and electronics and much else.

  The second node was in Abuja, the capitol of Nigeria. It was the richest country in Africa, a part of the British Empire since the 1800s, resisting several attempts to declare independence. It was thought by some to be the reason why the United Kingdom still existed. It had supplied many UK leaders in government, commerce, and science for over a century. Many Nigerians considered themselves British first and Africans second.

  The third was in India, also a member of the UK. It disputed the Nigerian claim, saying that it was India which had kept the UK a world power. It was far richer in wealth and culture than any other nation on Earth, including the sad little country which called itself the Black Jewel of the Empire.

  The fourth and fifth nodes came online on the same day in Beiping and Buenos Aires, the Chinese winning out as number four only because they scheduled the online event a few hours before the Argentines.

  The sixth and final node came online in a few months later in Adelaide, Australia.

  Jane visited each of the nodes as it officially opened. Virtual conferences using vears and holograms were all useful but they could not substitute for the emotional impact of face to face meetings and handshakes.

  Her main concern was engineering. To oversee it she chose Colonel Klaus Hoffman, Kate Schiller's husband and also a trusted friend.

  The engineering section's first task was to design a long-range long-lifetime drone, the "Snoopy." It was to have high acceleration, hyperspace jump capability, and a hypercom. Thus it would be able to explore and report back its findings from the furthest reaches of the Kuiper Belt, several billion miles.

  It was also to be very sensitive to attempts to capture it and dissect it, exploding at the first instant of such attempts. Jane did not want to supply potential enemies with technology breakthroughs. Thus the tech used in the Snoopys was deliberately lower than modern tech in case the aliens avoided the anti-tampering measures. That policy might also give enemies a lower opinion of Earth capabilities.

  Design of space drones was very mature. The high-performance but lower-tech restrictions Jane put on them helped speed the design process. Thus it was only five months before a first prototype was built by rapid manufacturing techniques. It tested well with only minor changes needed. This was mostly to make them even simpler and use even lower technology.

  It took two years before the first drones came out of the several manufacturing facilities in the countries financing the project. Each drone was automatically tested. Then the anti-tampering explosives were installed by remotely controlled robots, telerobots, into the drones. Then the drones were loaded by more telerobots into especially built telerobotic drone transport ships and sent off into space.

  Each was guided and shepherded out to the official inner edge of the Kuiper Belt by Super Scouts and the drones launched. Over several months over 100,000 Snoopys similarly disappeared in every direction from the Sun. This despite the fact that the sightings by the sentinels were all in one slice of the Kuiper Belt disc. Those sightings might be diversions from the real direction from which the alien predators would come.

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  The first workday after the last of the Snoopys were launched Jane had a global meeting of the leaders of the task force. As she sat in her virtual conference room she considered the problems facing the task force.

  Language had been one of them but wasn't any longer. Her insistence that everyone in the global nodes speak at least one language helped. So did the automatic translators in widespread use. They even handled slang and idioms well, though expert users set their translators to translate such oddities strictly. Humans were still better at judging their correct meanings.

  Jane did not use auto-translators. She spoke Spanish, Russian, and Chinese fluently as well as English, sometimes switching languages in mid-sentence.

  A bigger problem was that each of the several nations who funded the task force had their own axes to grind and sensitivities to soot
he. Jane dealt with them diplomatically. However, by now everyone with much contact with her had learned to read her body language well enough to avoid her rare blowups when her patience was stretched too far.

  An even bigger problem was that the task force was global. Thus each part of it was in a different time zone. Noon for Colorado was late afternoon in Argentina, early night for Ukraine and Nigeria, late night for India, and early morning in China and Australia.

  A partial solution was to use the official day of the World Space Station where noon was set to that of a location halfway between the US east coast and Europe's west coast. That still inconvenienced the part of the world opposite that location, but people and organizations adapted by such means as using text messages and recorded voice.

  For this meeting to favor what was night on the opposite side of the planet from Jane she had set the meeting for 10 pm her time. This was 10:30 in the morning the next day in Mumbai, noon the next day for Beijing and 2 pm the next day in Adelaide.

  On her side of the planet Ukraine was 7 in the morning the next day and 5 in the morning the next day in Nigeria. Buenos Aires being only four hours ahead of Colorado, it was 1 am the next day there. But BsAs was a special case. Its citizens routinely stayed up till 4 in the morning--during weekdays! Jane had never figured out how Argentines got any useful work done.

  General George Adebayo was the first leader to appear in the virtual conference room. His exec Colonel Raymond Okafor was beside him. Somewhat to Jane's disappointment the two in their uniforms seemed wide awake and chipper. Their drones had been to the last to come off the assembly lines and she was still pissed at them.

  Both greeted her in the poshest of British accents. And no wonder. Both were graduates of St. John's College in Cambridge and Lords This and That of Something and Something Else. At least one of them had an ancestor who'd been the British Prime Minister. Having the blackest of black skin was no detriment to status in the Greater British Empire.

  Next was the Russian Federation's colonel and lieutenant colonel of their air force. They said Hello but in Ukrainian. Jane replied in Russian and joked about them getting up so early. Their blank faces suggested that they didn't find her comment funny.