by Guerin Zand
“So, you want me to turn the Rangers into the Collective’s Space Force?”
“Call it what you like, Guerin. We’re not asking you to do anything you’re not already doing. What I’m saying is, let’s all stop playing these little games.”
“Let’s just set aside all the arguments I’ve raised in the past to this idea, I’m assuming even at your advanced age your memory is still intact.” Ok, I couldn’t resist tossing in an insult of my own. So, sue me. “This would require a lot more people and ships. We simply don’t have those resources available. Even if we did, it still would make things a lot harder for the Terran system, and its people, when they start venturing out to the unaligned worlds.”
“As I said, you would have access to all of our facilities. We can produce as many ships as you might need. As far as personnel, you should think about recruiting from the Collective as well as the unaligned worlds. I know you have friends out there who have worked with you on some of these issues in the past. It doesn’t have to be just a human endeavor. I know that Roger and Katie are wanting to move on from there roles on Earth, so I’m sure they’d help you. And I know one young Bree lady who’d like to be a part of this as well. Jackie and Senri are already working with your teams, so why not approach some of your other friends in the Collective to help you recruit from their ranks?”
“I don’t know, Julie. We would have to promote from within. That means I’d end up losing some of my crew, as would Steve. I’ve just gotten them all broken in, sort of.”
“So, does that mean you’re considering it?”
“We’ll have to talk this over and I’ll let the team decide. I’ll set up a meeting and I want you to be there. I’m sure more than a few of them will have questions for you. I’m not going to let you turn me into a bureaucrat though, Julie. If Roger wants to run the logistics of this, then fine. If not, we’re going to have to find someone else to do it. I’m not giving up my ship and my freedom.”
“So, we have a deal?”
“Not so fast, Julie. Like I said, we’ll see what the others have to say about this first. If they decide to go along with your stupid idea, I won’t argue.”
“Good, so is this when we kiss and make up?”
“No! That’s never going to happen.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying. So, what’s the catch, Guerin? I was expecting you to put up a big stink when I brought this up.”
“Well, compared to some alien space bitch that can warp reality, you and your stupid ideas aren’t really that big of a threat.”
“So what’s your plan for Gamma? Maria mentioned that she may have some abilities that need to be addressed?”
“I’m not sure about her having any special abilities, but growing up around a bunch of space bums isn’t exactly ideal. I want to send her off to one of your stations for her education, but she’s been fighting me about that. Maybe you could help convince her?”
Julie smiled and said, “Are you asking me for another favor, Guerin?”
“I guess, but I’m desperate.” And I was. “You didn’t see Gamma down on Desterio. That was not my sweet little daughter. I think it would do her good to spend some time around people her own age for a while. Besides, you owe me more than a few favors by my count.”
Chapter 11
Hurry Up and Wait
We escorted our cargo ships to their destinations and then returned to Hell. When we arrived, Steve was already there with the Discovery. After not seeing any ships coming or going from Desterio for a period of time, he decided to deploy a sensor net to keep watch on things. This would give us enough warning if there was any activity to get either the Ryvius or Discovery back on site to deal with it. Before coming to Hell, he stopped off at Earth and picked up Roger, Katie, and their son ‘little’ Timmy. I still had Heesa onboard the Ryvius. I was going to return him to Trogan, but I had to wait until we had dealt with Desterio. We were going ahead with our plans to ‘hide’ the planet, but we had to wait for the system to be completed first. That was going to be at least another two months. For the time being, I was going to leave Heesa on the Ryvius and Kelly was in charge of guarding him as a punishment of sorts.
Steve, Roger, Katie, and Timmy were waiting for us in the mess hall at the main building. They had arrived a few days earlier, so I had instructed the fembots to take care of them and give them a tour of the facilities. The rest of the Discovery’s crew were either on their ship or out exploring. We all went through the standard greeting rituals. Everybody knew everybody else, except Timmy and Gamma had never met. Maria introduced them, and Gamma was all giggles. After meeting Timmy, she whispered something in Maria’s ear. Maria nodded her head up and down enthusiastically. Although I didn’t hear what they said, I still didn’t like what I was seeing. You don’t have to be an alien mind reader to figure out what that was all about. I really needed to get my sweet little daughter away from these types of spaceport trash. Luckily, Alpha was there as well, and after being cramped up on the ship for a while, the dog was eager to go outside and play. She made that very clear, so Gamma, Mary Ann, and Alpha left us to go explore the woods outside the spaceport. Prima and Scirla saw that Roger was there to talk business, so the two of them headed to our residence.
The rest of us took a seat. Along with Maria and I, Julie was there as well. I filled everyone in on the little conversation that Julie and I had. Roger could see I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the whole idea. Hell, I would have preferred to be out playing with Gamma and Alpha to be honest, but I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Roger and Steve, on the other hand, seemed very interested in what Julie was offering us. We’d done this dance before, and Roger knew I was looking for him to convince me that this was a good idea.
“Obviously, Guerin, you seem to have some reservations about taking Julie up on her offer?” Roger was the consummate politician, and convincing people to see things his way was a specialty of his. I looked to Roger to reassure me when it came to making these sorts of decisions, and he knew that. I had already decided to accept Julie’s offer. That didn’t mean I wasn’t concerned about it.
“I have a ton of issues with this, Roger. First, we simply don’t have the personnel, and we’d have to worry about security if we do start increasing the number of people involved.” I really had a long list of issues and I knew we couldn’t address them all, but this was a big one. “We already have a problem with possible Trogan agents already in our ranks and in the Terran system.”
“I think we can help with that.” Timmy jumped into the conversation. I knew he had been involved in the embassy security on Earth, but that was all I really knew about Timmy. “From the medical exams your crew performed on the one captured agent, and the data we already had from the one you called Wang Chung back during the Chinese incident, we have a way to screen for these agents and we have already made a lot of progress in that area.” Roger nodded for Timmy to continue and explain.
“See, although they may be human, just like those of us modified by the Collective, they have a few differences we can detect using simple blood tests. They’ve undergone genetic enhancements that are easily identified as Trogan in origin, but they’ve also been living on a foreign planet. The food they eat, the air they breathe, the water they drink, all of these contain trace elements that may be unique, missing, or at different concentration levels than you would find in a human living on Earth.”
“That sounds all very fine, Timmy,” he scoured as a used my little pet name for him. He really hated being called Timmy. “But have you actually been able to find any agents using this information, and won’t any agents that are out there get suspicious when you start requesting blood samples from them?”
“That’s the really simple part of all of this. We required all Rangers to provide blood samples when they first applied. Almost all of the Terran government requires the same from all applicants to sensitive jobs as part of their security clearance process as well. So, to answer yo
ur first question, yes, we have found nine agents so far in the Terran system.” Timmy seemed very proud of this fact and I guessed he must really enjoy his job. “We first checked the Rangers and we found no agents amongst the teams. Those we have found so far, were in the Earth and Mars governments, but we still haven’t finished screening all the officials from the outer moons and some of the smaller colonies.”
“So, Timmy, are we positive there are none among the Rangers, or is there a chance that even with this test we might miss a few?” I had to ask.
Timmy frowned a bit. Having your work challenged is never fun, but it was a necessary question. “We believe that the results of these tests will positively identify any agents as long as they’ve had the Trogan genetic enhancements and/or have spent a reasonable amount of time living on a world outside of Terran space.”
“But …” I knew that wasn’t the complete answer.
“There is always the possibility that the Trogan agents have recruited local support from within the Terran system. These tests would not identify any such agent. Then, if we were to take Julie up on her suggestion of recruiting from the Collective and unaligned worlds, these tests would be of little help. Hell, these tests would flag you and most of the Rangers that have spent enough time off Earth and have had alien modifications.”
I simply shook my head. It was a start, I guess, but I still had a lot of concerns about security. “I won’t say that all of this doesn’t help, but security is still going to be a problem. Even if our screening process was one hundred percent effective, we all know that the possibility exists for any of those we screened to turn.
Keeping this base’s location a secret is also an issue. I have already taken steps to keep the location of this system hidden. The navigation systems of our three ships have the location, but I’ve encrypted that information. The crews can only program the system location as a destination, but they don’t have access to the actual spatial coordinates. That will prevent anyone from passing on the location of our new base planet.” I looked over to Julie. “We will have to assume that the Collective will do their part in keeping this information to themselves.” Julie nodded in agreement.
Steve sort of raised his hand before asking, “But couldn’t anyone we bring to this planet determine the location from analyzing the relative position of the stars that are visible?”
“Perhaps, Steve, but they’d have to be a lot more intelligent than our ship’s navigation systems.”
“I don’t understand.” Several other members of our teams nodded that they also didn’t understand what I had meant by that answer.
“Well, this also would apply to Desterio once we cloak that planet. You see, the cloaking field, as I explained before, actually warps space around the area being cloaked. A ship, light, or whatever, traveling to the actual physical coordinates of the cloaked area will be diverted around the actual location. That warping of space will also distort the view of surrounding space from any point of view within the cloaked region. Sort of like the refraction of light makes a stick you poke into a body of water appear to bend. If you new the refraction index, you could calculate this, but in the case of the cloaking field, you’d need a lot of information about the actual field to compensate for that in your positioning computations.
I’ve already tested this with the Ryvius’ systems and you can try it with Discovery if you want. Use your nav system to determine the location of this system. Then have the system display that computed location, just to see what’s in the database. You’ll find it’s an empty area of space with the closest star system over two hundred light years away. Then open a portal to that location and see for yourself.” It was actually a fun experiment.
You could tell all this technical babble was boring Roger as he tried to resist yawning. “Great, so we don’t have to worry about our location getting out there. What are your other concerns then, Guerin?”
“Keeping the technology we have access to here secure, Roger. We have access to some of the most cutting-edge Collective technology in the archives stored in this facility. I have no intention of releasing any of that to the Terrans. Some of it, I have already locked down and no one has access to that information. I’ve even taken steps to keep that info hidden from myself as well except under certain circumstances.”
“But I thought our primary mission is to help humans with their technological advancement.” Katie was surprised by my last statement. “Why would you not make this information available to our scientists?”
Julie actually came to my defense. Yea, I know, that scared me too! “That was Guerin’s initial mission, Katie. He achieved that part of the mission a long time ago. We gave humans enough of a boost in technology, and you’ve prevented wars that would have slowed if not stopped human advancement. Humans are going to have to make their way on their own from here on. Even our protection of the Terran system will eventually be lifted, so humans need to be ready to be on their own.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Julie.” I have to admit that I did have a few questions about all of this as well. “According to your offer, you are giving us access to all of your technology.”
“But that’s the issue before us, Katie, isn’t it?” This was what gave me reservations about accepting Julie’s offer. “If we decide to take Julie up on her offer, we are going to have to stop thinking of ourselves as Terrans. We’re not really, are we? We’ve all had some form of physical enhancements provided by the Collective.”
“Then what are we, Guerin?”
“I don’t know, Katie. Hell, I’ve been trying to figure that one out since day one. But, if we accept Julie’s offer, we’ll become members of the Collective and not Terrans anymore. There won’t be any room for split loyalties. That is why I think it will be difficult to keep this technology secure within our ranks. Can you say that you’d never disagree with this policy and be tempted to release some of this technology to the Terrans? What if there were hostilities between the Terrans and a more advanced race?”
Katie didn’t have an answer. The light finally went on in Roger’s head. He understood what really had me concerned. The answer to the first question I posed to Katie was simply no. She, and nobody else in our current group of Rangers, could guarantee that circumstances wouldn’t change at some point. No one could guarantee that they would never choose Terra over the Collective. “If we expand our fleet of ships, how do we keep their Captain’s from defecting with those ships and the technology they contain. Hell, we’ve already had one mutiny.” I glanced over to my daughter Maria with one of my looks, just in case she didn’t know who I was talking about.
“Ok, Guerin,” Roger replied. “You make some valid points that the rest of us didn’t consider, but I think that all of us here want to take Julie up on her offer. So, let’s consider what we need to do to make this work.” Everyone nodded in agreement, even me after seeing that everyone else was onboard. I had told Julie I would agree to it if the rest of the team decided to accept her offer.
“Ok,” Roger smiled seeing that I had agreed. “While being the Collective’s ambassador on Earth had been a privilege, I’d like to resign my position and move out here with my family to help you with this, Guerin.” My plan was obviously working. I wanted Roger to be in charge of all of this, but I didn’t want to ask him. I wanted him to make that decision on his own.
“That would be fine, Roger.” Julie smiled. She was the one that was really getting what she wanted here. “I’ve discussed that with Guerin, and Nancy will replace you as ambassador when you’re ready to move on. We’ll obviously need you to stay on Earth to help her with the transition, but you can start working with her on that as soon as you’d like.”
“Good. Let’s face it, Guerin. You may be a good leader, but you’re a terrible manager.” Roger chuckled a bit. “You’ve been running things like the Rangers were your family, and not as an organization.” Roger gave me a little smile. “I suspect you actually put on this little show to
convince me to move out here and help you out, didn’t you?”
“That would make me almost as bad as Julie, Roger.” I smiled back.
“I have no doubt that you’ve learned a few tricks from our benefactor, Guerin.” Everyone seemed to get a good laugh out of that statement, well, except for me. Being compared to Julie was not what I considered a compliment. “For right now, let’s put off growing our ranks until we have procedures and policies in place to satisfy your security concerns, ok?”
I nodded in agreement.
“Then, if there is no objection, I’d like to formally accept Julie’s offer on behalf of the team.”
No one objected. I don’t think any of us truly understood what we were agreeing to, or where it would take us.
“Good. That’s settled.” Roger seemed to be happy. I don’t think the ambassador job really agreed with him. “Julie, you said we’d have access to your manufacturing facilities?”
“You do, Roger. Is there something you need?”
“I think with the current number of Rangers, we could crew four more of the cruiser class vessels. Could you get your facilities started on that, and could you get back to me with an estimate on the approximate completion time?”
“I will get them to schedule the construction when I return. Since these are not a new design, I’d estimate six months to delivery. Shall we simply base the interior layout on the current Discovery design, you know, the one without the princess suite,” we all let out a little laugh, except for Maria. “Or do you want to review and modify the interior layouts before the construction begins?”
“It’s not a princess suite!” Maria huffed. That just made us all laugh a little bit louder.