Vaz 4: Invaders

by Laurence E. Dahners

  As she plopped into the seat of her car, Tiona thought exhaustedly, That girl’s a tornado of fun!

  Then she pondered whether she could blame Nolan for… whatever had happened.

  And wondered how much of the blame for their foundering relationship belong at her own feet.

  I’ll call him tomorrow, she resolved.

  ***

  When Levon sickened of holing up in her cramped cabin and returned to the bridge, the officers that were present turned their eyes toward her, though not their muzzles. As she climbed onto her rest, she decided they looked afraid. Probably because of what happened to Second, she thought. At first, Levon felt concern over what this fear might do to the morale of her team, but then decided that whatever camaraderie they’d had prior to transition was already gone. Better to have them fearful, than to have them constantly questioning my decisions. Levon tried not to think about whether her decisions should be questioned.

  Levon had been on the bridge for some time when one of them finally spoke. It was Third Officer. “Captain, did you want to send a manned mission to the third planet?”

  Acerbically, Levon said, “And which one is the ‘third’ planet?”

  “Um,” Levon heard her swallow. “The binary planet? Remember, the larger member of the binary has an oxygen atmosphere? By the mission directives we should survey the biosphere and begin tailoring viruses to eliminate any problem species.”

  Levon felt glad that she still had her back to the bridge officers so they couldn’t read her dismay at the realization that she should have already sent such a mission. Swinging about in a fury, she said, “You haven’t sent the mission yet?! What are you waiting for?!” Third Officer reared back in panic from this onslaught and didn’t respond for a moment so Levon continued, “The longer we wait, the more propellant it’s going to take! Of course we want to send the mission, the sooner the better!”

  Placatingly Third Officer submissively dipped her muzzle. In a rush, though calmly and quietly, she said, “We’ve begun prepping the lander. Fifth Officer has designated a crew to bring out of hibernation and the genegineers have begun bio-modding them so that they’ll tolerate the low density atmosphere and high gravity. Second Officer has worked out several possible transfer orbits.” She swallowed, “Really, there’s been no delay… We’ve been getting it ready… we’ll be able to launch shortly…” she trailed off.

  “Launch as soon as it’s ready!” Levon had a sudden thought, “Is the atmosphere thick enough for aerobraking?” Without aerobraking they would have to provide the lander with even more of their precious propellant.

  “Yes, aerobraking and parachutes should be sufficient for landing. Also there are enormous bodies of liquid water on the planet. They’ll be able to use the water for propellant if they need to launch again rather than staying behind.”

  Levon blinked, “Why wouldn’t they stay behind and begin prepping the planet?!” If it wasn’t for the high gravity and the thin atmosphere I’d stay myself.

  If for no other reason than just to avoid enduring another solar perihelion.

  “Um… what if the sapients… endanger them? The directive says that if they don’t think they can survive attacks by the local lifeforms, they’re to return to the ship—bringing biologic specimens so that the genegineers in home system can plan their bio-obliteration.”

  Did they forget to tell me that this planet had intelligent life? Or, Levon almost shuddered, did they tell me and I didn’t notice… Or forgot? She hoped that her dismay and astonishment hadn’t evidenced itself on her face. In all the systems that the Rendor peoples had spread to so far, they’d never encountered another intelligent race. Levon had thought they never would. Now, the question was, how technologically advanced were these aliens. “Give me a rundown on what we know about their technological capabilities.”

  Third paused a moment as if gathering her thoughts. “They use radio, in fact they use a lot of radio. They have satellites orbiting their planet, but no space elevators so they must be launching everything with rockets. If they are flying missions away from the planet itself, we have not detected the propellant plumes so they must be quite rare.”

  “Do they have computers?”

  “We presume so. Most of their emissions are digitally encoded.”

  “So… technologically fairly primitive, but still, they might be able to cause trouble for a mission we landed on their planet,” Levon mused.

  “Yes ma’am,” Third Officer responded, though Levon didn’t notice.

  ***

  At 9 o’clock the next morning, Tiona arrived at the GSI meeting with a bit of a hangover. She thought, Perhaps I should be a little more forgiving of Nolan having a hangover when I went to his place that morning.

  Entering the room, she saw everyone staring up at a big screen. Tiona turned curiously to look at it as well, seeing a dark-haired girl stepping onto an odd-looking skateboard. Tiona had to smile at the girl’s clothing choices. They reminded her of the loose clothing Tiona’d worn at University to fend off men’s advances and gain acceptance at the homeless shelter.

  Tiona was looking at the girl’s cute facial features when the girls suddenly rose into the air. Her eyes shot down to look at the skateboard, Holy crap! There’s nothing holding it up! She must have thrusters in that… lift-board?

  Everyone else in the room was babbling excitedly. Tiona stepped next to Dante and said, “Who the hell is that?!”

  Dante shrugged, “We don’t know. This video has just gone viral with no comment beyond, ‘Awesome new sky-board at the skate park!’ I’ve got somebody trying to track it down.”

  The girl was about six feet up in the air and moving smoothly away from the camera. Tiona said, “This isn’t her first time on the board, she’s riding it too effortlessly. Where did she get the discs? They’re what, ten or twelve inches?”

  Sounding a little exasperated, Dante said, “I don’t know! I suppose she must’ve taken them out of a safety harness. That company that’s making your fly-bike hasn’t even gotten to market yet, but maybe someone could have stolen some discs out of their inventory. The real question is who built the software for that board—software’s the big hold up on the commercial production of your fly-bike.”

  “Holy crap!” Tiona breathed as the girl leaned hard to the side and began cutting hard circles on the board. Then figure eights. Then she started shooting over and around the obstacles in the skate park. “That ain’t all software brother-o-mine. The girl’s really talented!”

  The meeting came to order with a resolution to find the girl on the sky-board and decide what the potential for this new thruster use was going to be. If the girl was part of a company formed to make sky-boards, they’d need to remind the company that it needed to license the technology. If the girl’d come up with the idea, design, and software for the sky-board herself, perhaps they could help her license her ideas to a company that would build them commercially.

  The rest of the meeting was kind of a letdown. It wasn’t that there were problems, there just wasn’t anything that seemed very exciting after watching the sky-board video.

  ***

  Tiona’s car dropped in to land next to her parent’s farmhouse. As she got out she looked around at her surroundings. She was on the edge of the enormous lawn that covered her dad’s underground lab. Ordered fields of crops that grew to low heights surrounded the area of the house. She suspected that her dad’s obsessive-compulsiveness had something to do with the precision arrangement of precisely sized fields. She grinned to herself. He’s probably a huge pain in the ass for the farmer who’s actually growing them, she thought.

  One of her dad’s surveillance discs had come out and flown around the car when she first landed. Now it floated up to eye level and focused its camera on her. Tiona waved at it and started toward the back door of the house.

  Lisanne was in the kitchen roasting something that smelled really good. Tiona began looking forward to whatever it was that
they were going to have for dinner, though she found herself slightly disappointed that her dad wasn’t cooking one of his crazy meals. It’d been a long time since Vaz had cooked something when she was over.

  Lisanne greeted her with a hug, exclaiming over how it had been several weeks. “How’ve you been doing?”

  “Okay,” Tiona said, pausing to wonder whether she should relate her issues with Nolan. Deciding that she really wanted to talk it over with someone, she described the recent events to her mother.

  At the completion of Tiona’s tale of woe, Lisanne sighed, “Your father has his own set of… issues, but at least I never had to worry about other women. Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust Nolan again?”

  Tiona shrugged, “We haven’t even had a good talk about it yet.”

  “Oh,” Lisanne said, looking a little bit startled at this revelation, “well… you should at least do that.”

  “Yeah, I kind of feel like this whole thing’s at least partly my fault. I’ve been gone so much, then when I’ve been here I’ve been so busy… And, he just doesn’t have much to do so it’s no wonder…”

  Lisanne interrupted, “He’s not a child. It isn’t your job to find things for him to do. If he can’t do that for himself, maybe he’s not the man you want?”

  They talked a bit longer, but then Tiona said, “I thought you wanted me to meet somebody?”

  Lisanne said, “Oh! Yes I did. I got distracted talking about Nolan. She’s out at the barn with your dad.” Lisanne took a quick look around the kitchen and stirred something on the stove, “Let me walk you out there.”

  Thinking, She? Dad’s hanging out with a female neighbor? Tiona slowly said, “I think I can find the barn myself, Mom.”

  Lisanne gave her a look, “And then, who’s going to introduce you to her? Your dad?”

  Tiona snorted and grinned, “You’ve got a point. Maybe you’d better come along.”

  As they walked out to the barn Lisanne described her friendship with Clarice and told her about Clarice’s daughter Reven. They were going through the barn and Tiona looked fondly at the old saucer sitting in the corner. Lisanne was explaining Reven’s makeup debacle. Tiona said, “I hope you’re not thinking I can teach her how to put on makeup?! I’ve never been very good at that—I hardly ever wear anything more than lip gloss.”

  “Oh no. But wait until you’ve seen her. She’s very cute—lip gloss would be plenty for her. But her… clothes. She, um, tends to wear kind of unattractive, poorly fitting jeans and T-shirts like she’s working on the farm, even when she’s going to school.” Lisanne glanced at Tiona out of the corner of her eye, “Kinda like someone I used to know.”

  Tiona put her hand on her chest and gave her mother a hurt look, “Surely you’re not impugning my sartorial choices, are you? Especially not right before you’re going to ask me to help this girl with hers.”

  Lisanne laughed, “Don’t you try to pretend your sartorial choices didn’t need some impugning back in the day!”

  “Well,” Tiona said with a shrug, “they may have looked like poor choices, but they were actually exactly what I needed to wear for the effect I was trying to get—you know that.”

  “Granted,” but, having had that experience, it seems like you’d be the perfect person to give Reven some advice.”

  They were mostly down the stairs and about to enter the basement so Tiona touched her mother’s arm to halt her. “Wait a minute. How am I supposed to bring this up? Is the girl even aware that her mother’s best friend is planning to stage an intervention?”

  Lisanne looked troubled, “Well, no. Besides, you know it can crush a teenager’s spirit just to know someone thinks they need advice. I’m… hoping you can find some way to just slip it into conversation.”

  Tiona rolled her eyes, “That’s not something I’m good at.” But she released her mother’s arm and opened the door into the basement.

  A few steps into the basement and Tiona stopped dead. Standing there talking to her father was the girl from the sky-board videos!

  After a moment’s surprised discombobulation, Tiona recognized the sky-board sitting on the lab bench next to them. Diagrams up on the big screens revealed its internal layout including the fact that it had its own fusor! Tiona glanced at her dad, And that’s where she got the software! It all made sense now.

  Lisanne was nudging Tiona forward, not knowing why she’d stopped. “Reven, this is our daughter Tiona.” To Tiona she said, “This is Reven Davis, our next-door neighbor. Her dad’s farming our land and her mom’s become my best friend. Her folks are going to be over for dinner with us in a bit. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen, but I know you’ll enjoy looking over Reven’s flying skateboard project with them.”

  Lisanne left and Vaz woodenly accepted a hug from Tiona. He said, “Reven had an idea for a fly-board that we’ve been working on. Would you like to see her ride it?”

  Tiona grinned and shook hands with Reven, “I believe I already have.” Tiona wasn’t surprised to see Vaz looked puzzled, but Reven looked surprised as well. “Haven’t you seen the video of you riding the board at a skate park? It’s all over the net.”

  “Oh!” Reven said, looking startled, then appalled. Her eyes shifted back and forth between Vaz and Tiona. “I… didn’t know. Is it okay if I take a quick look so I’ll…?” She didn’t finish her thought.

  At a nod from Tiona, Reven’s eyes went to her HUD as she mumbled to her AI. Tiona turned to her father, then nodded at the fly/sky-board. “That board’s pretty amazing Dad. What gave you the idea?”

  Vaz looked a little startled, apparently at the thought that it had been his idea. “It was Reven’s idea. She knocked on the door and asked if she could get some discs to make one. It sounded like a pretty interesting project, so I helped her with it.”

  Tiona narrowed her eyes, “What parts of it did Reven build?”

  Vaz shrugged a little uncomfortably, “Well, mostly she consulted on the design…”

  They had time before dinner for Tiona to take a little ride on the fly-board herself. She was glad to see that the safety harness Reven was using was her dad’s latest design. Since she had intimate knowledge of how and how well it worked, she felt confident riding at six feet where the safety harness would have plenty of time to catch her. That was good, since the fact that Reven made riding the board look easy didn’t keep Tiona from falling off over and over again.

  However, before they went in to dinner, Tiona had had enough good rides that she already wanted a fly-board of her own.

  By the time they got into dinner, Reven was thoroughly star struck. It was hard to believe that someone as important and famous as Tiona Gettnor wasn’t more full-of-herself. Somehow Reven had expected that, despite the down to Earth nature of Dr. and Ms. Gettnor, their famous daughter would be some kind of prima donna. Instead, Reven found herself sitting next to Ms. Gettnor and, at her insistence, calling her “Tiona.”

  After Reven and Tiona had talked about farm life for a while, Tiona turned to her with a serious look. “What are you planning to do with your fly-board?”

  Reven shrugged, “Well, I love riding it. I’m hoping sometime soon other people will have them ‘cause I’ve been thinking it’d be fun to have competitions. You know,” she tried not to burble her excitement, “slalom courses and acrobatics and things like that.”

  “Ah, that’s all good. But I was thinking more along the lines of whether you wanted to license the idea… or start your own company to build sky-boards or something like that?”

  “Um, we call them ‘fly-boards.’”

  Tiona lifted an eyebrow, “You don’t think ‘sky-board’ sounds cooler? That’s what they called it on that viral video you know?”

  Reven got a distant look in her eyes and said “sky-board” a little dreamily. “I guess it is cooler.”

  “So, back to the original question, “Would you like to license your idea?”

  “Really? You can license the idea of bui
lding a… board?”

  “Well,” Tiona winked at her, “you couldn’t patent it. But you might be able to license it if you know the right people. It’d be impossible to patent just the idea of a sky-board. I think the idea was already featured in a movie from the nineteen eighties where they called it a hoverboard. But, someone who’s become a sensation on the net because she’s really good at flying one, someone who helped to develop the first working model—that person could probably claim some licensing fees if she knew the right people down at GSI.”

  Reven felt her own eyes widening as understanding swept over her. “Really?! You’d help me do that?”

  Tiona nodded, “Especially if that person was the daughter of my mother’s best friend.”

  They talked a little longer, then Tiona asked, “Did anyone else help you come up with this idea?”

  Reven’s spirits fell. “Yeah. A kid named Eddie Scott. He used to be a friend of mine.”

  “Not anymore?”

  Reven just shook her head, hoping Tiona couldn’t see how miserable the revelation made her. However, her voice broke a little as she said, “No, he’s got a new girlfriend.”

  “You used to be his girlfriend?”

  Reven shook her head, “No,” she said around the frog in her throat, “just his friend. But his new girlfriend doesn’t like me.”

  Quietly Tiona said, “Maybe you’re better off without him?”

  “Yeah,” Reven practically whispered, though she really didn’t think so.

  “Well, we still need to figure out what his contribution was. Did he helped design it or build it or anything like that?”

  “Nah. We just used to talk about how cool it would be a few years back when the thruster discs just first came out. He didn’t help with the actual sky-board. He’s not even excited about it anymore.”