Jim 88

by J G Clements

  The black clothes I was wearing was not a uniform. Or it wouldn’t be until I had the insignia designed. So, by protocol, he should not salute me. But with the events of the last couple days, and me standing in front of the most advanced piece of technology on Earth today, that fact might have become lost on him. Before he could make that mistake, I put my hand out for a handshake, and squinted my eyes a bit to make sure he saw my signal. Smoothly, he shook my hand and as he did so, I glanced at Jack.

  Jack took his cue perfectly and did the honors. “Commander, this is the Recruiter. Recruiter, this is Commander Smith”. A curt nod and I released his hand. I looked him in the eyes, then slid my look over to Jack. The Commander understood this completely and from then on, would only address Jack.

  We reviewed the troops. Jack nearest the line, with the Commander abreast of him. I stayed a half-step behind them, the furtherest away from the line. I was the awkward anchor that both men knew was behind them, and I forced them to go at my pace. Despite the game I was playing, I was serious as I looked each soldier, sailor, airman and marine in the eyes. I could only wonder what they were thinking, not about remaining in the military but if they were thinking about protecting Earth. I knew there was some protocol where I could have asked a soldier, but I wasn’t sure that it was. So I let those thoughts go as our tour came to its end.

  Finished, the three of us returned to our ship. As the Commander and Jack exchanged a few words, I stood with my hands folded in front of me, patiently waiting for the exchange to finish. When I thought it had wound down enough, I made the only comment I was going to make today. Instead of addressing the Commander, my words were for Jack.

  “Captain,” it left no doubt at that moment who reported to who. “Please make sure that when the Commander’s schedule permits, that we assign one of our ships, one of our fastest ships”, a slight side nod of deference toward the Commander, “to personally give the Commander an orbital tour of Earth.” Smiling a tight, small smile at his expression, I climbed the steps where a crewman could be seen waiting for my arrival. I didn’t have a cloak to give him, so I arranged to have a stack of papers handed to me as I boarded. A minute later, Jack came on board, and with a friendly wave from Jack to everyone watching, the door closed.

  Jack immediately stuck out his hand to congratulate me. The crewman cleared his throat, asking me to actually read the papers he had given me. Scrawled on the top sheet, “You didn’t suck.” I took that as a compliment.

  Seven minutes later we were airborne. Traffic Control was struggling to figure out how to control air space, and there was some questions on how far away everyone should be prior to launching. My advice would have been, ‘as far as possible’, but no one asked me. I was too busy anyway trying to get newsfeeds to see how I did.

  And I had done great. Between the shots of the ship taking off, and panoramas of the parade grounds, there was my face. Taken with a telephoto lens, but it was part of the speculation of who the Recruiter was, and how I got the name. I sat down to watch, and Jack sitting next to me, asked if I wanted any framed photos for my room. “Jack, the news I’m watching for is to see who now admits to knowing me. I spoke briefly to the Speaker and Majority leader yesterday. I want to see if they admit it. If they run from it, then I’m going to be looked at as a mysterious sinister guy. But if they say how they spoke to me, how we had a meeting of minds, that sort of thing it means I’m an important person that they are struggling to see how I fit in.” I thought for a second. “I wonder what Agent Dan thought?”

  “I got his card you know. Most of the agents have business cards. As he showed it to me…it showed what agency they were with, an address, and a phone number. Should I call?” I glanced at Jack to see if he was serious.

  “No. This needs to play out the way we dealt it. If it doesn’t take, then we might call him.” I had heard enough on the TV. Reporters were now asking each other to give opinions instead of reporting. They were asking each other what they thought of me, and nothing looked too bad. I really was the mysterious person, but not being labelled as sinister or as a bad guy.

  It was several hours later that my reputation was made. The Speaker of the House released a brief that he had met me and we had a chance to exchange views on these events, and that though I had invited him onto the ship he had to decline because of the National Security meeting. I was delighted. But then it totally spiraled out of control. Some reporter had put together a really interesting spin on things. Somehow, Helen worked for me. The story now was that I was in charge of the fleets, and had allowed myself to be taken into custody. I had met the President, had been to the White House, and I was actually on the base when the ship arrived. It was all me me me! I leaned back on the couch, and wondered if Helen was going to be pissed.

  Jack told me he had decided to do a couple orbits before docking with the Oddjob. Something about letting everyone’s radar see us. But by now, my adrenaline was draining away, and I was struggling to maintain my alertness while staying relaxed. If I could do it on a sunny ledge on a mountain, I could do it in orbit. I composed myself, and tried to mindlink.

  “Helen?” A tentative request.

  “I know. Give me a second”. I assumed she was in a meeting and I didn’t want to bother her. But in less than a minute she was back in my mind, her humor evident. “You are a genius! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!’

  With her approval, my snarkiness returned. “You looking at the same news footage I’m looking at? Boss?”

  “They say I work for you.” For the first time she really flirted with me. “I am yours to command”. I didn’t let it go far, I was too worried about her. Actually a lot worried about her.

  “I command you to take care of yourself! Please?”

  “I have some decisions to make, but one new probability I can now use is that I need to speak to my boss.” No laughter now. A rational mind. “Now, I need to rejoin the meeting. In a few days you are taking at least a hundred dignitaries with you to visit a dead Beetle world. I am looking at locations suitable for us to have a spaceport. I will try to see you before you leave, Recruiter.”

  “Ok, Spacegirl”. I felt her contentment with me as I left her mind. I never got the chance to explain that’s how car salesmen work, too. Take it to the manager to get his Ok.

  Chapter 10. The Sisk.

  Ceres Report: I thought about leaving my ship in orbit and trying to just land using the Mule. It’s a little rocket…just two tanks I can fill from my main tanks. But the more I think about it, I can see a lot more problems. Instead, I’m going to orbit a couple days and try to get a look on where to land. Like I said I already missed my opportunity to get here for a null-gravity zone, so I’m not in much of a hurry. When I pick a spot, I’ll land my entire craft.

  With the almost one hundred dignitaries and their assistants on board, it took three days for the Oddjob to rendezvous with the Sisk. During that time, the Ambassadors owned the mess and the crew and McKinsie fleet was fine with that, eating in various nooks of the ship. Sue had to mediate some problems and learned that when it's only the Ambassador and her, she could be blunt and that would be that. She used Fleet members to keep them out of areas they weren’t supposed to be in, but it was amazing how few efforts there were at trespassing. A lot of the assistants asked for one-on-one tours and Sue thought she could tell the secretaries from the agents by the questions they asked.

  Jack drove, letting Sue learn more about the operational details of the ship. As was common, she took turns running the various Bridge stations helping her to complete her education. Consequently, she was on the Bridge when the Sisk came into view.

  If the Oddjob had been impressive, this was overwhelming. The Sisk was a dreadnought, but Jack said that name meant nothing today. It did indeed dread things. It contained over two hundred one-man fighters because it dreaded Swarms. The one-man fighters didn’t have enough fuel to get far, often running out in less than thirty minutes. But they were a decent weapon again
st a Swarm. If by decent that meant that they could defend against a really large Swarm.

  The problem was the Sisk just didn’t seem to look like a ship. Not streamlined at all, it was very bulbous, with a rough-hewn exterior where no effort had been made at smoothing. Not exactly craggy, but it didn’t fit anyone’s idea of what a ship should be. As they closed to within a quarter mile or so…Sue being relieved that Jack was driving…she got her first lesson in how to build a dreadnought. For starters, besides being almost three miles long, it wasn’t made of metal. Or at least the outside wasn’t. Jack, sensing her confusion explained why. “Metal isn’t wasted on armor, it has too low of a melting point. Rocks and silicates are much better. With their lousy heat transfer and high boiling temperatures, those materials could handle a lot more energy from a beam weapon. Think of the Sisk as an asteroid. An asteroid bristling with weapons, but an asteroid nevertheless.

  Other McKinsie fleet personnel had entered the Bridge, and they all were struggling with the size of the Sisk. A crewman, the same one who had trained Sue in Jack’s absence explained that if you wanted a tour, you need to pack a bag. What they finally understood was to look at it as a collection of machines, weapons, implosion-drives and several living quarters, all nestled in a large asteroid. When you don’t have to design for being streamlined, a lot of problems go away.

  Despite the size of the ship, the implosion drive was not very different than the smaller ships, it just consumed more energy. To jump, a field was set up around the ship, and then the field imploded inward, forcing everything inside it to leave the known universe. But the field collapsed with a temporary hole in one end, and that part of the field closed last. And that was the direction the ship squirted, though not in normal space.

  A crewman who turned out to be one of the senior Jump Technicians was more or less giving an impromptu lecture to the McKinsie personnel. “Once out of normal space, the ship moves at an instantaneous velocity, until it encounters a gravity well that dumps it back into normal space. So depending on how it was aimed, we can get to a star system in less than a minute. Unfortunately, once if drops into the normal universe we need a couple days of normal thrusting to get far enough away again from that local gravity gradient so we can jump again. And it’s during those days of maneuvers that a ship is a target.”

  A sun was the usual source of the gravity well, but if a ship was cheek-to-jowl with an ice giant, it would be just as easily trapped. Jupiter, for example would be large enough to drop a ship into normal space. Once trapped in normal space, it had to get far enough away where the gravity gradient was below 0.01 ft/s-s. And though Suns were bright and easy to plot, there was always some concern about deep space objects that could be large enough to get a ship to drop out far from where it wanted to be. Other than that, it was a reliable and simple system. There was an anecdote that one of the Squid designers once said that the only moving part was the on-off switch.

  To the surprise of the McKinsie Fleet, they were asked to split their numbers and ship out on both the Sisk and the Oddjob. The Oddjob was going to remain the ferry for the Ambassadors, but excess McKinsie personnel could ship on the Sisk. The destination would take only two jumps, with anticipated gravity-lock time of 47 hours between jumps. But Jack asked Sue, personally, if she would remain on the Oddjob and help keep the dignitaries under control. Gaining her acceptance, he went to the hanger where the Troy was preparing to depart.

  While watching it get ready, Sue ran into Jim. Snaking an arm around him, she asked if he would stay with her on the Oddjob. To her surprise, he said he had been specifically summoned to the Sisk. “Sue…it doesn’t really matter which ship I go out on. I’ll stay here with you and we can see the Beetle world together?”

  Before she could respond, Jack pointed directly at Jim and motioned him toward the Troy. Realizing what he had just done, Jack lost no time in making a beeline back to the pair, and more or less asked Sue’s permission to berth Jim over on the Sisk. A little at a loss for words, Sue acceded and with a backward look of confusion, Jim was in the tow of Jack. Along with a dozen or so of other McKinsie Fleet personnel, he was herded into the Troy.

  While this was going on, the Troy was making a great show of readying itself for departure to the Sisk. The Troy’s new pilot, Jake Dubois, was also the Captain of record of the Sisk. As he entered the bay to inspect the Troy, the Recruiter went along with him. Some of the dignitaries were there to watch the departure and Sue knew something was being orchestrated. She just didn’t know what. While Jake and Jack were saying goodbye to each other, they both seemed to be friendly with the Recruiter. They seemed to be telling him tall tales, meant to embarrass each other. He smiled at them, enjoying himself. Still, he said very little. As they boarded, the Recruiter swept his eyes around, seeming to see everything. No one else had gotten close enough to speak to him.

  Of the personnel who did go to the Sisk, Jennifer wasn’t one of them. For some reason she seemed content to stay on the Oddjob. Sue was too tired after all the work getting the dignitaries settled to say much to her, but thanked her. Jennifer was genuinely pleased, but Sue couldn’t resist a dig. “Any chance you are dining with the Captain this evening?” Jennifer was actually forming a reply when she realized what Sue was doing.

  “He hasn’t asked.”

  “Well, don’t let the bottle of hooch he gave you affect your judgement. He needs to buy you dinner first”. Laughing, the two girls started for their berths. With the jump being imminent, Jennifer wanted to be at a viewport. But Sue was exhausted enough that she would be in her berth when it occurred. Even the hot tub wasn’t interesting tonight. Then, abruptly, she was summoned to the Bridge.

  “Hello number two. I would like you to be on the Bridge when we jump. He motioned her to take a seat. “The Sisk will go first. We give them a 30 minute head start. If they run into trouble, they have 30 minutes to take care of it before we arrive. If we arrive and there is a problem, we’ll know it because the Sisk will be engaged in combat. Got it?” Sue nodded, her fatigue forgotten. “Great. Could you man the Life Support Console?” Probably the easiest of the consoles on the Bridge. Life support ran itself. Her decisions would have to do with cutting off certain areas in case of a problem or a hull-breach. But Jack’s sense of humor was at work: “Let the record show the Ambassadors were breathing before jump.” He glanced over at her to make sure she got the joke. He saw something there but didn’t comment. Instead, a steward brought her coffee.

  Less than a mile away, over on the Sisk, the Troy had arrived and Jake and the Recruiter took Jim directly to the Bridge. Elsewhere, more than a dozen of the McKinsie fleet personnel were spread around the ship, each person having gone to whatever station or jump-task interested them. A few were at the fusion generators. More were at the weapons consoles, learning how they operated. Of the McKinsie Fleet, only Jim-88 had gone to the Bridge.

  Upon entering, Jim was struck by how dark it was, subdued lighting with only certain consoles acting as islands of light. Jake made an effort to show him around, and said he was welcome on the Bridge anytime. Jim was polite, but instinctively knew that Jake didn’t make this offer lightly and this invitation must mean something. After that, the Captain turned his attention to what the ship was doing and Jim was left alone. Moving toward the five observations chairs on the back of the Bridge, he noticed the Recruiter was already there. Catching Jim’s eye, he motioned him to have a seat. With all the commotion among the consoles, both men remained silent. But both of them were interested in how the ship was commanded.

  Jim looked over at the Recruiter, and noticed he appeared pre-occupied. Like he was listening to something that took his attention away. Just the faintest trace of a smile was on his lips for a second, then his attention returned to the events happening on the Bridge.

  Jake was all business now. Efficient, an irresistible force, but calm. The Recruiter surmised a perfect submarine commander. As he watched, the various technical specialties reported on the
status.

  “Jump engine power is available. Everything five-by-five.” Enough power available and of the right type.

  “Dampening internal and external is correct.” There was some equipment that would help mask the actual mass of the ship, and prevent a large gravity blip from radiating outward into the solar system. Not very good on the large dreadnoughts, but really good on the one-man and small scout ships.

  “Offensive weapons damped but warm. Capacitors at 2-shot charges. Kinetic weapons all loaded but idle”. The fusion reactors that powered the weapons were warm, but off line. Instead, enough power was stored in capacitors that each beam-weapon could get 2 shots off while the fusion reaction re-started.

  “External temperature above nominal” Jake swore at that, but knew there was nothing he could do. The mass of the rock that gave the ship protection absorbed too much radiant energy this far in system. When they jumped, they would probably arrive as an easily detected warm body. The ideal jump was to enter a star system no warmer, and no colder, than the objects around you.

  “All Observation stations are manned. Passive scanning on-line”. Upon arrival, lots of eyes, human eyes, will sweep the skies looking for trouble. Passive camera systems will do the same, looking for things that are too cold, too warm, or moving too fast.

  Jack seemed relaxed. Turning around to look at Jim he said to no one in particular, “Prepare for Silent Running”. Flashing him a smile, he faced forward and told the Bridge crew, “Pull the plug. And Jump”. And just like that, almost every electrical system on the ship went out. Then everything and everybody held their breath for a heartbeat, and the ship jumped.

  Though it felt that nothing happened, they were now many light-years away from Earth. They had aimed themselves across interstellar space in a direction that would avoid any gravity traps for as far as possible. They were now only one more jump away from their destination, but couldn’t jump until they climbed out of gravity lock.