by Jim Rudnick
The clerk was damn good at her job, as they quickly marched through a whole series of items. I should hire her, the Baronesses thought as the Agenda was now up to 5(A), and they began to discuss the Confederacy expansion plans, annexations, and more.
Lurdar, a member planet, had annexed a new planet in a smaller system off its borders and wanted to get the Council to add it to their realm. Discussion ensued about what this planet could offer the Confederacy, which apparently was little, as the top sentient on the planet still ate grass. Still, Lurdar was free to annex the planet, provide its own people, or for that matter anyone who wanted to immigrate to it, a deal on land and resources. In reality, the Baroness thought, much like our own Ghayth annexation. Course, we had our other reasons.
Item 5(B) was about a new discovery from Abstract, the alien world near Garnuth. It seemed on an exploration mission of their fifth planet, they had found the smaller moon of same a frozen sea world. With inner heat from same being channeled in below the ice, it appeared that there were creatures below the ice that had some semblance of society—at least that's what the lab coats on Abstract suspected.
They came today to ask for full RIM Confederacy help to perform a first-class inspection of the moon and its inhabitants, and as a gentle reminder, they offered that they were one of the smaller members of the Confederacy when it came to technology and budgets too.
That got some real discussion, and the DenKoss members were very strongly in favor of just such a Confederacy-wide program being launched and funded by all. Some heated discussion ensued for almost an hour before the triple gavels wielded by the six-armed chairman banged the desk at once to try to get some order.
"Vote—Clerk, call a vote here, please," the chairman said, and the clerk nodded and asked for a full standing vote.
The Baroness waited until the ayes were called, then stood, was counted, and sat.
"Program inception has passed; budgets to be created and then at our next Council meeting to be allocated and voted on at that time," the clerk said and then moved on to 5(C). This was quickly passed by all as it entailed only an extension of the Duchy of d'Avigdor and their attempts at expanding the marine academy on Combat—something all were in favor of, it appeared.
"Item 5(D) is now on the table," the clerk said. "The Roma refugee status and the mission to Memories is next." She looked over at the Baroness.
My time, the Baroness thought, as she rose to speak to the Council.
"As of our current status of our mission to Memories—a reminder that it lies in the unnamed nebula just outside our southern RIM borders in an area that is between us and Pentyaan space—we have completed same. The reports are on your tablets as I speak," she said and made a motion for an aide seated behind her to send them out STAT.
"While you can read them at your own leisure at a later time, for now, all I can say are the following facts. We discovered, after a full planetary audit, that there were slightly over one hundred—one hundred and twelve, to be exact—of these terraforming foundries. However, that term might be somewhat incorrect—as not a single one is capable of changing anything on the planet. In fact, it appears that all of them are merely some kind of mining machines. They simply track in a line, following the natural contour of the ground, and every so often, they send down from the foundry itself a huge powerful laser blast that immolates the ground down as far as almost three miles. From that laser flash, we noted that the resulting vapors, smoke, and et cetera are all sucked up and into the foundry for analysis. Most times—in fact, nothing else happens—the foundry begins to move again looking for its next laser spot. But once in awhile—we are still analyzing the data—something will be found. When that happens, an Ansible message is sent to a master Ansible satellite above the planet for sending somewhere else.
She nodded at all the sudden questions that many members had but held up her hand to stop them. "Yes, we know. We are looking into why the satellite is mute too, we do know that much at least, and we will report back as soon as we know more," she said as she resumed her seat at the large U-shaped table.
"Baroness"—if the member from Skogg could have been any more rude, she couldn't imagine it—"why would anyone tender such an empty report to the Confederacy, Ma’am? We need to know more—much more—and you've not provided answers, just a lot more questions, Ma’am" he said, his purple skin almost black as he was obviously upset. Skoggians were usually purple, bit when their emotions came to the surface as they grew happy, upset, or angry, it changed the tint of their purple skin, and this one was upset.
She nodded. "Yes, how true—but a reminder that we've been down there for all of a couple of weeks; that we approached Memories with the information supplied by the Roma refugees—that they were scared of what they found. So this has been—and will be—a mission that we are very cautious about. I assume that by the next Council meeting, I will have more news to report as of then," she said and turned away from that dark purple face to look around the table.
"Any idea as to why these refugees were scared at all?" the member from Conclusion asked, as he slowly stroked the white hair that lay on the backs of both hands.
"At this point, not a single thing to say on that—we take our first group of refugees—their ship’s officers—back to the very foundry that caused this all to happen in a day or two. I will update you all with an EYES ONLY after that should something come to light then.
"But you should all know that from what we've found so far, it might be an idea to begin to think about who sent these foundries, to what purpose, and more importantly, what we should do with them? The last thing I would think any RIM Confederacy member would want would be a new race appearing suddenly a few lights off our borders with a planet to call home," she said, and that got some nods too around the table.
Isolationism was not something to think about often, here on the RIM, but sometimes protectionism was.
#####
As she came down the final few steps of the escalator that went up to the Council chamber on the second floor of Navy Hall here on Juno, the Baroness saw that a Caliphate aide was waiting directly in front of her.
The Baroness walked off the last step and moved over to stand directly in her way, one eyebrow artfully arched.
"Baroness, the Caliph," she said as she pointed out the front of the building just a few yards away, "would like a word, Ma’am?"
The Baroness nodded and followed the aide out the huge double doors to the few stairs that took one down to the street level just beyond.
The Caliph got out of his limo, moved directly toward her, and said "Care to walk a bit, Baroness?" and he moved off toward the left on the sidewalk. He walked at a slow pace, and she noted they were not being followed by aides. Over at her own limo, two of her EliteGuards looked upset but held their ground.
She caught up with the Caliph and said, "Speak."
"Ma’am, you have things I want for the Caliphate. You have the Ikarian longevity vaccine. I want that for my own realm, but that is not news to you at all. What is news is that you also have something else that we just discovered, but at this point, we have no idea what it is ..."
He held up his tablet and the tarmac of the landing port over on KappaD suddenly sprung to life. Over a full five minutes, the video displayed a dolly being rigged out to move laterally along the ground, and at the same time, a slowly rising lift-deck holding a couple of Barony Navy officers rose off the dolly up and up and up. There was nothing to see as to what was holding that half-ton or so of officers up in the air. No pylons or structure or any kind of loadbearing scaffolding. Not a thing. As he shut off his tablet, he stopped to turn to face her directly.
"Ma’am, what you have there—we do not know what it is, maybe new technology you've found or borrowed or bought. But we want it too. And as I'm speaking plainly here, we will stop at nothing to gain access to this—this—anti-gravity technology, Ma’am," he said simply.
She shook her head. "Anti-gravity is a myth
, my Caliph—you know that, and whatever that was, it was anything but that. I'll have to Ansible with my captain down there, but it was obviously something else. If the Barony had anti-gravity, we'd be the richest realm in the galaxy—something I'd sure like to experience.”
She was fuming, but she showed a relative calm outward appearance, as she flicked her hair off one shoulder and put on a smile. Caliph or no Caliph, he was still a male, she remembered, and she leaned in to touch him on the arm.
"Of course, Caliph, you and the Caliphate have something we, the Barony, would like to have too—the access to that red ore from Enki. I understand that you have already ordered new foundry equipment from Roor, for the purpose of fabricating those new outer hull panels. That ore is something we'd like too, and perhaps we can schedule a time for you and I to meet to discuss some kind of negotiations on that. Would that suit you, Caliph?"
He looked at her solemnly and then smiled. His black eyebrows arched up and he chuckled. "I would like that, Baroness. My tents are your tents, if you'd care to come to Neria in the near future?"
She smiled back at him. "Only if you can provide some degree of comfort from your very hot climate?"
He nodded back and said, "Done, Baroness. I will do some planning and then will EYES ONLY you for our setting of a date.
She smiled back and they turned to walk back to their limos, the bright shining sunlight on Juno all around them…
CHAPTER FIVE
The Atlas ran slowly down the lane between two large nebula peninsulas that jutted out toward the G-class sun around which Memories orbited. Getting the ship into that lane alone had been a challenge, and Tanner was glad that the helm today was once again Lieutenant Cooper.
"Steady as she goes," he said and got an "aye" back from the helm, and the whole bridge crew watched the view-screen as the large magenta-and-ocher-toned walls beside them slowly moved apart.
Here, up in high orbit over Memories, the search for the so far un-found Ansible satellite had been fruitless. They used the coordinates from the five foundries they'd now visited down on the planet to get a lock on where it was to be found—only it wasn't.
Science had been confounded by that, as Tanner remembered the look of incredulity on his Sheldon's face.
"Sir, it's supposed to be right there—dead ahead and less than a thousand miles away. But, there is nothing there—Atlas sensors find not a trace—yet—yet it ..." and his voice trailed off as he really did not have an answer.
"Ansible, do we have any idea as to when the last message was sent up from the surface to this missing satellite?" Kondo said, and all eyes turned to Lieutenant Irving, the Ansible officer of the day.
"Sir, yes—three messages have been sent today already. But as we noted, there is no notification sent back to those three foundries—nor to any at all that we can trace. Seems like this is a one-way messaging service, Sir," she said, and that at least looked right.
Tanner sipped his tea.
Foundries were moving below them, lasering in for whatever it was they were looking for—and when found, messaging the satellite.
The satellite was supposed to—at least in our world, he thought, get those messages and send them on.
But no satellite was found where the coordinates said one should be.
How come was the question?
"Ansible, do we have any way to check when the oldest message sent to them was made? How long ago, I mean?" he asked his lieutenant.
Lieutenant Irving turned to her console and began to enter some kind of a search. She worked for a full minute, then stopped, and then seemed to re-work her query as they all waited.
On screen, the port-side magenta wall was creeping closer as the lane here narrowed. The helmsman adjusted their pathway, and the Atlas moved back in the middle of the narrow space, always progressing at slow speed toward the system star well ahead.
"Sir, I've—well, I have no idea on what kind of date this is—or what it means, Sir. It appears that the third foundry we visited, the one with the most laser drills in its path behind it, did make a simple 'good to go' type of message, if I understand the code that was used. Thing is, Sir, it was made, it looks like, more than two thousand years ago. Which would mean—"
The XO interrupted her. "Which would mean that the foundry sat waiting to be powered up and begin its terraforming work for a full two thousand years. That'd be before the RIM was even founded, back into pre-FTL days, Sir," he commented, and by the tone in his voice, one could tell he didn't believe the time-line.
"Sir, the message is clear—there are dozens more of them all stacked up in this satellite INBOX from what I can tell—we just can't find the satellite itself, yet, I mean," she said and blushed a bit.
Tanner turned to Captain Siegel, the RIM Navy captain who was a constant guest on his bridge. "Captain, anything here to add?" he asked politely.
"Not at this time," Captain Siegel replied curtly.
Tanner noodled around a thought to himself and then spoke up moments later. "XO, coordinates do not lie—but there is no satellite at the verified set of same, correct?"
"Aye, Sir."
"So, why don't we ourselves send a message similar to what's been sent and see what happens?"
Science Officer Sheldon nodded. "To verify the INBOX is working, the satellite would have to accept same—which might mean that we'd get a new set of coordinates with the real live current location—not one that is thousands of years old. Good idea, Sir," he said as he beamed a big smile.
"Roger, send that Ansible—and Helm, watch your sensors carefully," Tanner said, and they all studied the view-screen ahead.
On the sidebar, the notification came up that a message had been sent.
And nothing else happened for a full minute.
From the port side nebula wall, something appeared ... a small dull-looking satellite about fifty feet long moved out under some kind of power to sit at the proper coordinates, and it just sat there. A minute later, it slowly retreated into that magenta wall of gas and dust and particulate matter.
"Hmm …" the XO said, "that's strange to say the least. The satellite knows it is hidden within that nebula arm, yet it must respond with a movement out to gather an incoming message, then it moves back into hiding. That is not only odd, Sir—but I think even something more—sinister, I think, would be the word. Who would program an AI to do that—and for what all-encompassing reason is my question."
Sheldon over at the Science station couldn't wait to answer, and he cut in before anyone else could respond.
"Nonsense, XO—this is exactly the kind of AI that one would use if one wanted only to remain hidden from a casual observer. Nothing more, as I see it—and a reminder that perhaps two thousand years ago, the nebula was shaped differently with different lanes and pathways. Or perhaps something since its initial placement here has occurred and the satellite is doing as it's supposed to—which is to hide. We did find it fairly easily, and we know now where it is," he said as he pointed up at the view-screen sidebar which now listed the satellite data.
It was fifty-three feet long and twelve feet wide with a huge array off one end that was probably its antenna for both incoming and outgoing Ansible messages. The Atlas scans had determined it was nuclear powered, that it moved using a small drive system that was again nuclear powered, and that it appeared to have no physical entry point—no port or bay or any way to enter same.
But more importantly, it appeared to have some kind of a magnetic flux field around it so that when it sat hidden in the nebula itself, that field gathered any metallic particulate matter and used it to “hide” itself from scans. Even the Atlas with its leading edge technology had not been able to pick out the satellite from the cloud of metallic bits that this nebula was filled with.
"A real bit of AI there," the XO said. "Sir, what do we do? Do we want to go in there with our biggest cargo shuttle and take the satellite onboard for further testing, or ... "
Judging from the lo
ok over on Sheldon's face, the Science officer felt there was only one good answer, and Tanner nodded and half-smiled.
"XO, get an away team over there, and yes, pick up the satellite and move her down to engineering for a full look-see at what we've got here. Make sure that Science and engineering leads are involved as I want no harm to come to that satellite," he finished off and went to make another tea over at the tea station.
Odd, he thought, I wonder when I changed the name of the coffee station to the tea station. He smiled broadly. Guess being captain has some advantages, and he stirred in the second big dollop of sugar.
Already, the XO, followed closely by Sheldon, had trotted out of the bridge on their way down to Deck Five to the landing bays, and as he sat and sipped, he noted only thirty-nine new reports to read, study, understand, offer counsel on, and then okay as the captain had to.
Advantages appear to be a bit limited, he thought as he sighed and opened up the first of them.
Three hours later, he got a buzz on his console and recognized the XO immediately.
"Sir, we have the foundry satellite on-board, we're down in engineering bay six, and you should come down to look at this, Sir," he said. His voice didn't sound ominous, but there was a note of of concern.
As Tanner closed off the latest report, he noted he'd gotten through more than half of the original thirty-nine and there were only five new ones, which again made him re-think the captain’s advantages list, and he put his console on hold.
"Helm, you have the conn—I'm going down to see this foundry satellite on engineering bay six if you need me," He left the bridge and turned to port as he left same and took the long main corridor on the Atlas as he made his way.
It took almost ten minutes to get past the massive landing bay, through to the other side, and then down a deck to Deck Six, and then a farther long walk down to bay six. Entering, he got a nod from a surprised Provost guard who had been stationed to bar entry, he thought, and he made his way toward the group of crewmen ahead.