To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  “Yes we found one; we've fumigated it after making copies and sending them to the authorities,” Miss Cole said patiently. That led to a blizzard of questions and demands for new information on the investigation and manhunt. Unfortunately, she didn't have anything more and after a rehash of the same answers she made her exit from the podium.

  A few of the crew of Icarus left the ship before she launched, opening up voids in the crew roster. Hannah was offered a berth post as an SBA but turned it down since she was overqualified for the post and didn't want to be a nurse. The ship already sported a marine biologist who had cross trained as a primate vet to care for the crew. And unlike Daedalus the ship's doctor had no problems treating Neos.

  “I don't know what's wrong with you gal! Get your foot in the door! It's what you wanted!” Isley demanded, eyes flashing when she called Hannah.

  “I'm good here. I'm working in the neo clinic, working with the dolphins, and I do two shifts a week in the company hospital. I'm racking up experience. I know what I'm doing,” Hannah said. In all honesty she was no longer thrilled about working with some of the genetic projects. Fortunately her clinic work kept her rather busy so she didn't have to look any deeper.

  “Okay, you say so,” Isley said, sounding not so sure.

  “Besides, I can stick around daddy. He's having it rough with Jamey missing,” Hannah admitted. “Two of us going off …” she let the thought die.

  Isley nodded sympathetically. “I see,” she murmured. She wondered if Hannah would ever make the jump to starships as she'd dreamed at all now with her brother and sister-in-law out of the picture. Could she put that sort of stressful burden on her father? She frowned thoughtfully.

  “You've been busy? How did you know I didn't take the position? Hell, how did you know they offered it to me at all?” Hannah asked, sitting back and waiting.

  Isley rolled her eyes two seconds later when the transmission returned to her. “I put in for you for the position silly! That's why they asked you specifically,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, you kinda made me look bad. It's okay though, I was hoping for a friend but …” Isley pretended to snuffle.

  “Yeah, right,” Hannah accused, eying her. She knew Isley too well. “You are probably bedding half the damn ship. Wild orgies and stuff. Pass,” she said, shaking her head.

  Isley grinned at her. “Spoil sport. It'd be fun!” she said wickedly. Hannah gurgled a laugh. “Look gal pal, I've gotta run. We're taking on stores before we start our working up exercises,” she said. “Shit's going to start happening lickety split quick,” she said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Toodles toots,” Isley said with a grin as the connection broke.

  Hannah snorted, staring at the blank screen. Obviously someone was influencing the little wench's vocabulary. Or she was getting into old movies. She shook her head and went back to checking her mail.

  Act III

  Chapter 28

  Three years later they were surprised when they received the transmission from Daedalus right on schedule. She had jumped the 3.31 light years in just under eight weeks and was outside Proxima Centauri but off course again. The crew reported that they planned a short hop to finish the job. A comparison of the telemetry was done immediately. Now that they knew what to look for the worm was easy to find. It had grown, taking over more systems and had begun to substitute the real data feeds with its own fictional ones. Trevor grimly pointed out the worm.

  “Can we warn them? Send them something?” Miss Lang asked.

  “We did. We sent them a transmission. I don't know if they will get it in time or not. I doubt it,” Trevor said, shaking his head.

  “By the time we did and by the time they receive it …” Jack shook his head. “It'll be years too late.”

  “Damn,” Miss Lang said softly.

  Jack exhaled a sigh. “My sentiments exactly.”

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Icarus passed her working up exercises with flying colors a day after they received word from her sister ship. She had been upgraded slightly from her sister ship; they'd poured everything they'd learned plus a bit of new tech advances in EPS conduits and reactors into her. She would be more efficient, with twice the range as her lost sister.

  Isley had reported on board as a junior engineer during the final stages of her construction; she'd worked her way up the chain of command on the ship as she ran through her working-up exercises. She'd distinguished herself by catching a few teething issues with Bret's help. Stomping bugs had been a major headache for the engineers as well as the yard dogs assigned to ride heard on them.

  When Daedalus's report was announced, everyone read the telemetry report with ferocious intensity. They then begged the grapevine for more information. There was a lot of excitement over the probe results of the system. In many ways they were riding along in spirit with the crew; every day something new came in.

  There was a great deal of disappointment that no habitable planets in the Proxima system had been found, but that had been expected by the astronomers. She caught up with Hannah to gripe about the final probe results.

  “A red dwarf has a butt load of planets. Astronomers have been saying that for years. You'd think one would be right in the Goldilocks zone,” she said, shaking her head in disgust.

  “But they knew that none of the five in the system were. They've known that for years,” Hannah said.

  “Yeah, but I was hoping they'd missed something,” Isley grumbled.

  “You and a lot of people apparently,” Hannah replied in amusement at such wishful thinking. “It's a barren system, but not necessarily useless.”

  “How so? Oh, space habitats sure, but …” Isley grimaced. “People want more worlds. Those are useless.” She indicated the report in disgust.

  “That doesn't mean anything,” Hannah said absently.

  “Huh?” Isley shook her head. “Yes, it does.”

  “No, and you should know better. Mars remember?” Hannah asked her smiling slightly.

  “Mars?” Isley wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What about it?”

  “Mars, Venus, Titan, terraforming?” Hannah said patiently. “It's possible to move a planet remember?”

  Isley blinked at Hannah in confusion then she made an Oh face. Hannah smiled at her and nodded solemnly. “Right. So, we can send in a terraforming ship. Or a series of them. I bet the bosses have already figured that out. And remember, Proxima is only one system. One system among many. There are billions more out there.”

  Isley grimaced. “Ah. If the bleeding hearts don't get involved.”

  Hannah nodded. There was a large fight brewing between the conservative fanatics who didn't want mankind to touch other star systems. One Earth was behind it. Fortunately they were in the minority. With Earth so dirty and crowded, people wanted off the mudball. They wanted a fresh start for themselves and their kids. Elbow room, a chance to expand and explore. “True,” she said, cutting off her thought. “But they shouldn't bitch if we make a habitable world from nothing.”

  “Yeah, but there might be bacteria. Or they will say it's beautiful as is and should be left alone. Trust me, we've been dealing with crap like that for the past century on Mars,” Isley grumbled.

  “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the hammock,” Hannah teased.

  “Funny. I'm worried about Daedalus. They should have been back by now,” Isley said slowly. She looked away and bit her lip when she realized who she was talking about it with. “We're still processing the telemetry feed from when they were in Proxima Centauri.” She grimaced. “The powers that be aren't being very forthcoming about it though. Something's going on; you can feel it in the air when I go by certain areas,” she said. “We'll know when they left … if they left.” She shook her head. “I'm not sure about that. I know they said they jumped but …” She frowned. “ …And we won't hear from them for another couple of years when they get to Alpha Centauri.”

  “I
f. Yes, the signal would take a couple years to get here. But they should have been back by now. I suppose they could still be in the system. A drive problem, maybe they wanted to stay longer …” Hannah frowned, now pensive about the idea of something going wrong. “Jamey's there; he can fix it.”

  Isley saw and heard doubt in her friend. “I'm not happy about their reports that they wandered off course. Did your finny friends have anything on that?”

  Hannah sighed. “No. Doctor Lagroose gave them the messages from the pod that went on Daedalus but it was interesting to them, but confusing. I'm not sure they understand completely.”

  “The latest gen is okay?”

  “Yeah. They can communicate a lot better. I'm trying to help but I'm not a speech therapist and I didn't delve deeply enough in cetacean neuroscience to make much of a contribution. I'm trying to take a correspondence course now to make up the difference or at least keep up with the team's discussions, …” she shook her head wryly. “But I'm just a country doctor.”

  “Too much generalization and not enough specialization you mean?” Isley teased. It was an old rib, something Isley had run into herself in college when she stuck to the middle road and sampled a broad spectrum of engineering courses but didn't delve too deeply in one or another specialty. Hannah had gone even broader, dabbling outside medicine in an assortment of fields. “Well, things are loosening up over on Icarus. Did you hear we lost the chief engineer?”

  “You did?” Hannah demanded, aghast. “What happened?”

  “He swapped to another project. He said he'd rather work in the yard and on inner system ships over going out on a starship. Some said cold feet; others think it's his family. I'm not sure.”

  “So, they bring someone new in?”

  “No, they were tempted to do that; Tenji had a decade of experience on an inner system liner. But the Captain convinced corporate to bump the rest of us up a rank and fill in the void from below. That way we get the fresh eyes, but we won't resent and have to train a noob to lord over us.”

  “Ah,” Hannah said, nodding. “Wait, so you got promoted?”

  Isley grinned. “Nothing gets past you does it?” She teased, tongue in between her teeth. Hannah made a face. “I'm now an assistant chief engineer since I've got a round view point. I've got hydro, life support, and power down pat. I'm still coming up to speed on the electronics,” she admitted.

  “Drive?”

  “We've got a new guy. Smythe. Adal Smythe. He's some hot shot; he worked with my granddad and uncle on some of the fusion drive designs when he was a teenager then. He tried to do a start-up on Mars, but he couldn't compete so he let Lagroose buy him out a few years back.”

  “I see,” Hannah murmured, unsure where the conversation was going. She took a sip of coffee.

  “He's good. Not totally dead in bed, but adequate,” Isley deadpanned. Hannah sputtered and then mopped up the mess as Isley giggled.

  “Funny,” Hannah sighed.

  “Well, I'm still hoping you'll get a chance to join our happy crew, so I'll keep testing everyone out for you,” Isley teased.

  “You're impossible, you know that? You're lucky you haven't picked up an STD at this point,” Hannah muttered.

  “Luck has nothing to do with it. I'm careful,” Isley said with her nose in the air.

  “Right,” Hannah drawled. “If you pop a test in a physical, you'll be beached fast so you'd better be careful,” Hannah warned her, eying her friend. That sobered Isley. “And you better keep your hormone implants going if you don't want to pop up with a bun in the oven. Another game over event.”

  “I'm good. Thanks for asking though,” Isley teased.

  “Just don't say I didn't warn you. And yes, to change the subject back to the ship, I'm on the waiting list. The reserves I guess you could call it. I'm hoping, but I don't know.”

  “We'll see.”

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Icarus made her initial jump to Proxima Centauri without incident, taking ten weeks to get there. They shaved some time off of Kaku's baseline due to the improvements in the ship's design over the years and the lack of the worm.

  Click'ck'a and her pod had followed the course perfectly. She was a bit smug about it, but Chief Roak punctured her snooty balloon by pointing out that they had used Daedalus's telemetry to make their experience quicker and easier. “They blazed the trail for us. It's easier for someone to follow along now that we know what to expect. Besides, we don't have the virus to throw us off course.”

  “I am still a better pilot than Kaku ever was,” the fin said stubbornly. The chief engineer shook her head and walked away.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Doctor Amelia Irons found life in the Mars stations so dull she transferred to the sublight ship division. They were always screaming for help; she was young without many roots so she decided to give it a shot. Since Isley was out of the system, her closest family was gone. Hannah was nice, but the older woman was tied up with her own life and projects most of the time, and she was a bit of a drag when it came to going out and partying.

  She found to her dismay that she was a bit overqualified to be on some of the smaller ships though, which was a problem. The smaller ships only needed a basic medic, at most a paramedic. Anything beyond that they could consult the database or radio for help in a major emergency.

  But larger ships were different. Her first was on for a brief run on a sublight liner to Earth. She found it interesting but not really her cup of tea, most of the ailments had been annoying or minor. The ship had run light; most people ran in the opposite direction. Tens of thousands were now emigrating from Earth via the beanstalk every month. When she found out she'd have to share a room with two other crew members in a hot bunk situation, she'd quickly put in for a transfer.

  She had been surprised it had gone through so smoothly; she'd been practically escorted off the ship within hours of the transfer request. She'd hopped a series of shuttles before she'd reached her destination, the L-5 station 12A. She felt like a tourist when she came on board the station. It was massive, hundreds of thousands of people were inside. There were some parks, some forests, but she found her explorations immediately curtailed as she was directed to the general hospital since she had extensive Neo experience.

  Work there was brief; she had Neo experience but only with the younger generations. And oh yeah, as coworkers, not patients. The older generations were wild, almost feral. They required the services of a trained vet; which she pointed out to the administration, she wasn't. She was used to handling a patient without having to worry about getting bit, clawed, or killed by them.

  Fortunately she'd timed the observation after Red Star had left port for Mars. But the administration had had their own revenge; she was transferred to work in the company's organ transplant department. She found that she got a lot more experience in surgery but didn't enjoy it.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Slowly, inexorably the FBI and Lagroose security closed in on Descartes and other hackers like him. The FBI kept the best hackers up on their top ten most wanted list for so long that they eventually created a new list for them. Descartes was, of course, top of the list.

  With Athena and other AI support, they cracked down on human hackers, though they couldn't catch the elusive AI hacker Puck. Not for a want of trying, but Puck had a way of slipping through their carefully woven virtual nets and seemed to laugh at their wasted efforts.

  Roman went so far as to hire additional security firms as outside investigators. He kept their knowledge compartmentalized in case of any leaks on their ends. There were several, most unintentional. Each was traced by Elliot, Trevor's people, and Athena.

  Athena was at a marked disadvantage in the manhunt; she was trying to do everything remotely through bots she set up and let loose from Mars orbit. Invariably the bots were taken out by AI or scrubbed by various well-meaning bots in the net.

  Elliot had recovered from his injuries and disdained counseling. He was a changed chimp,
bitter and withdrawn over the experience. He was coldly efficient though, and his unique perspective made him vital so Roman kept him in the field. He was a closer, so he couldn't complain about the chimp's results … even though some of his interrogations were getting … rough. Allegations of intimidation so far had been the worst anyone could level at the chimp though.

  Descartes was amused at first; the manhunt really wasn't news until he realized they were seriously after him. A lot of money and manpower was being poured into the FBI to hunt him down. The reward on his capture was out there, dangling like the sword of Damocles over his head.

  He practically wet himself laughing when they busted Nach. Nacho 'Nach' Seliz, aka 'Snatch Nach' or Nach Sleaze' or 'Nacho Business' got hauled out of his condo in his underwear on camera, head down, practically bawling as a swat bot and human officer muscled him to a waiting patrol car. The reporters had linked him to various pedophile shit as well as sleazy voyeur sites and blackmail schemes.

  He frowned thoughtfully. Nach had bragged about blackmailing Original Syn on the hacker forums. Idiot, he thought, shaking his head.

  The competition getting busted helped him; it thinned things out and drove up prices. But it also hurt he soon learned. Everyone knew he had a price on his head so they didn't want to be associated with him in case he did get caught. That fear drove away new business and made old customers more interested in finding him in order to silence him. He found he had more time on his hands … which he used to create a series of new identities, monitor the FBI witch hunt and work on Skynet's decision trees and various modules.

  Out of spite he found other hackers working for Earth First and One Earth and gleefully led Athena and the FBI cybercrimes division over to them. He sat back and watched, anticipating a major bust with swat and the whole nine yards. He even had Shadow set up bots to ghost into a couple of the FBI units as observers.