No doubt at all to its ability to establish a new communications system with the base station. And, if Newton’s laws held true out here in space, anything traveling in a straight line at any velocity would continue in the course and speed unless acted on by another force. Again, as in the ten foot wide parabolic antenna. Both ends of the line used the same type and size antenna. In space, there is negligible drag.
Parbolics are designed to take any kind of signal across any part of the antenna and redirect it to the pickup device at is focal point. This has been around for three centuries or so, and works well for light, radio signals, microwaves and even sound.
It works, of course, in reverse, taking a signal from the focal point out to the parabolic and radiating a perfectly straight column of signal out as far as it can reach. Which they did not know, just yet.
Jake first checked the computer for the on duty roster. He picked up the in-ship telephone and asked to speak to Kelly Alexander.
A few minutes later, a breathless Kelly said, “This is Kelly Alexander?”
He grinned. She sounded like she was running track. Or climbing out of a few fun moments in the sack. “Hello, Miss Alexander. This is Lt. Washington in the radio room. I have a message from your brother, Lieutenant Boomer?”
“Whaaat? We have not been able to message each other for a few days! How is that possible?”
“It is a long story, and my invention. He wants to prove it works at both ends. I sent him a coded message. He sent one back. Do you want to come up to the radio room, or just tell me your middle name? I can add whatever you want to say!”
“I will be right there! Give me thirty,” Kelly said, and hung up. Thirty minutes is considered very quick, considering she had all those decks and almost half of the nearly six miles of ship to cover.
She was in track clothes, loose t-shirt, cut-off short sweats and running shoes, but still, the radio room was the very top center of the ship. No elevators, yet. The civilian workout rooms were just ahead of the engine compartment near the bottom third of the ship.
But, she had a few tricks, passed on to her by others trapped in back. She opened a bulkhead door and stepped into the engine room. This was one monster cavern that basically took in several hundred feet lengthwise, but was nearly the diameter of the ship, enclosed in many small rooms to hold materials, supplies and workers all around the circumference.
It was, basically a section hollowed out from the entire back end of the ship. Four monster, nuclear engines were at the points of a square on the final back hull. Two ‘top’ and two ‘bottom’, widely spaced. Purring nicely.
Looking around, she hailed one of her many friends who was rising up from the very bottom of the ship on a small, flat, shuttle. It had a ‘T’ handle with controls and, though it was beyond her, it somehow worked with magnetics. Kelly did not care, she just wanted a ride up.
He grinned, looking up at the pretty girl in that sexy costume, blousy shorts and all, then veered toward her, still rising. He slowed as he approached her landing. “Hya, babe!”
“I need a ride to the very top, Billy! Can you help me?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, calmly, while his mind said, OOOOH YYYEEAAH!
Grinning as if she read his mind, she opened the gate in the handrail and stepped gingerly onto the platform. It dropped about an inch and stabilized. Gripping his chest like a motorcycle passenger, she held herself tight to him as they rose up almost another mile.
He was actually breathing funny by the time they reached the last landing.
She’d kept her hands carefully on his chest. But then, her own ample chest was pressing against his back. She grinned. Men are so easy!
He was sorry to see her go. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and a wave, and she was gone.
Billy liked Kelly a lot. But it was only friendship, from her side. She was looking for a fast riser. That was not Billy. Sighing, he let the platform sink down and away toward the engine he was fine tuning…
-----
Jake was getting anxious. He knew it was a hell of a long way from anyplace on the ship to the radio room. But he did not want Boomer and anyone else sitting in anticipation with nothing happening down on the moon. He was just thinking of sending a stand by message when she arrived.
A gentle knock at the door, and Jake, playing it cool, said, “Come in!”
An Asian mixed race, tall, lithe, with long black hair and almond shaped, deep green eyes, stepped inside. They shook hands as Jake stood up to meet Kelly Alexander.
Good grief, a beauty! he thought, but did his best to mask it in his eyes. He knew ahead of time she was mixed, for her bother Boomer, though less distinctive, carried the same DNA.
All that time he and Boomer had spent together or over the radio, she was away from home, college, special studies and all. He had seen her kid pictures. But nothing compared to the real woman standing before him.
He finally found his voice, feeling foolish. “Glad you could come up. Uhhh, Kelly, Look, the moon station is waiting, and we cannot let them lose interest. Keep in mind that whatever you say to Boomer will be read by anyone over his shoulder. But he wants your middle name to prove it is us.”
“Middle name is Xadine. It is why I don’t use it.” She spelled it for him. “Just tell him I miss him terribly. I am doing fine!”
Jake typed on the computer, fed the information to the memory card and popped it out. He pushed it into the black box and pressed the send button. Nothing happened, of course, and what was happening could not be seen, heard or felt.
“Did it go?”
“Yes. Though there are no indicators when it does, there is a single red LED that tells us if there is a loss of the output. No light, it is gone. A blinking green LED means message incoming.” As she looked around the radio room, not understanding much of what she saw, he watched her. Damn, she is something!
“How long does it take?” Sure enough, she was well aware of the handsome young man’s appraisal. It was all she could do not to preen!
A green light blinked twice, a second apart. “Not long,” he said, trying desperately to keep his voice calm. He pulled the memory card, pushed it in place on his computer and started the decryption.
Printed huge on the screen, it read, “Hello, Monkeyface! Miss you. This is a PHENOMENAL invention. Kudos, to bright boy Jake! You two need to hook up!”
Of course, with that, both young people stood beet red, stunned by the content, stunned by the fact that it worked so fast. Less than two minutes, though he had not timed it. Boomer had been anxiously waiting!
Jake sat down at the computer, typing some more sane suggestions to Boomer, asking him to show his Commander Danieler, then to have that one send a message to Commander Yardmen.
He was thinking ahead. He could read the avarice in Yemer’s eyes, hear the same in his instruction.
He was young in the service, but in long enough now to recognize the highly ambitious, and the lengths they would go to rise. Sometimes stepping on the fingers of those that they could control. So, a simple trick. Might backfire, but it would cement ownership.
“I have to get back. I am low on the totem pole, so I have to feed the worms, you know?”
“Worms?” he repeated, feeling stupid.
“I am a Health and Life science apprentice. Experiments. Stay in touch, will you? You have my pager!”
“Of course. See ya!” And, yes, he watched her all the way down the corridor.
And yes, all that way she put that special sway that will pull a man’s eyes from a block away. Would have been much longer, but she turned a corner.
He chuckled, unable to tear his eyes or his thoughts off of her. Why not? Welcome to the other side, he thought, smiling wide. What a… woman!
Fifteen anxious minutes later, the signal came through. With the letter of congratulations came a second notice. It was an unexpected by Admiralty promotion to Lieutenant Commander for Jake and Boomer, both!
They had moved
a half step closer to their own Commanders. Jake blanched. He was pretty sure how Yardmen was going to react! How the hell did they cut the orders so fast? But, he dutifully sent it on in the secure onboard communications system.
CHAPTER 11
A half an hour later came the real surprise. A call up to the radio room by the XO. “Lieutenant Commander Washington, report to the bridge.”
What the hell?
Pushing the comm button, he replied, “Yes, ma’am! On my way, ma’am!” The XO was, after all, a woman.
Like Kelly had, he was going a long, long way from top mid-ships to the bow. Nearly six miles. Fortunately, the long, staggered, moving walkways carted people along at three miles an hour, and he could jog them with an additional six without breaking a sweat. The layer of Velcro on the soles of his boots helped keep him on the moving belt, else he would float away. That put him at nine, but he still had twenty decks to scramble down. Magnetic inserts in the soles do not allow easy movement on steel.
He arrived outside of the bridge in almost forty five minutes, trying to gain control of his breathing.
Maybe they’re going to throw me in the brig!
He paused, made sure his hair was combed, his uniform looking fresh. He dusted the last spec off his shiny black brim and the tucked the cap under his right arm. He knocked.
“Enter.” The voice was pleasant and female.
He opened the door. This was an entirely new area for him, as he had been training in the radio room, and he had quarters far below it. No time or energy to explore the ship.
Half a dozen faces turned to greet him. One was the XO, one was Commander Yardmen, another was Captain DePaules. He did not know the other three, who went back to looking busy. He saluted and reported in. “Uhh, Lieutenant Commander Washington reporting, as ordered, Sir.”
“At ease, Lieutenant Commander. Your escapades have preceded you.”
Oh, shit! I am in trouble. I bet Yardmen squealed on me!
But none of that met his eyes or the firm cut of his lips. He moved to the standard at ease position and waited for the axe to fall. Nothing happened for a full minute.
Captain DePaules grinned, then said, “Don’t you just love to watch them sweat?”
No one answered him, maybe a protocol on the bridge, Jake thought, but kept his own mouth shut.
“I see that you seriously impressed Commander Danieler at moon base. He must have impressed the Admiral. A new, fast, and far reaching communications device. Yardmen tells me you invented it as a kid. That right?”
Relief flooded him. Yardmen was on his side. “Sir. The concept is not new. Digital packets are, as you know, used by the Cyborgs. What I did was compress the message to a point, shoot it like a bullet, and no one can intercept it. If they do, it is by accident, and they cannot decrypt it. The key is based on the month and year, encoded… Sir!”
“So, you reached way the hell farther out than anything we’ve managed. Do you know the limits? Oh, and by the way, congratulation on your promotion.”
“Thank you, Sir! I do not think it is limited by distance. It will be limited by time. If it needs more power, I have it. I only set it on medium, so far. I know we can bounce it like a ball, we’ve done it many times before launch. We even bounced it off of Earth a few times. No one intercepted it. But it is running the speed of light. At little more than six hundred million miles out, that will be an hour… uhh, as you know, Sir.”
“Yes, and six billion will be ten hours out and ten hours back, plus our added travel. It will get confusing, but it just may well work. At least we can report our progress. You are doing this with just a little black box?”
“Yes, Sir. It provides the parameters, but the message is simply an encoded and compressed text from the computer. To keep everything secure, I move the message to and from by a memory card… Sir!”
“I like it! It might not reach forever, but it is a hell of a lot better than silence. Okay, son, here is the deal. You show me how you can adapt our system to your packet box, make it work for three months without incident, and you will be a full Commander. Record time, but I want you in charge of the communications on this ship. Yardmen, don’t panic. I will have another plum assignment for you. That work, Lieutenant Commander Washington?”
“Yes, Sir!” cried Washington, snapping to attention and putting out a perfect salute. “There is one thing, Sir?”
“Really,” the Captain said, as if he was not surprised. “What is it, Lieutenant Commander?”
“It is already adapted in. I simply put it in the antenna line. It allows normal communication and looks for packets on its own. And three months will be difficult. We will have a hundred hours of wait between messages… Sir!”
“Good. Yardmen, see that he gets everything he needs. Do it. Okay, then how about this? I want to hear from the Admiral directly. I want a last report position on the other three ships. And a note from my great granddaughter, Simone. Do those over the next month, and you are full Commander. That better?”
“One more thing, Sir?”
DePaules looked at him, noting the earnestness of the young man, and his total lack of fear of him. “Okay, what?”
“I can do that by tomorrow, depending on the Admiral’s availability. Can we negotiate, Sir?”
DePaules chuckled, shaking his head. A true up and comer and fearless as could be. These people were damned good for the Navy. “You bring me what I want by tomorrow, son, and I will do it at the end of the week. Fastest rise in Naval history. But, I believe in you! You both are dismissed!”
After crisp, no nonsense salutes, they left together, and Yardmen put out his hand. “It was a given, Jake. Welcome to the club!”
“Yes, thank you, Sir. But it has to work, properly.” He knew, of course, that was not the issue. He was rising to Yemer’s level too fast. Would the man resent it?
“Hell, it already works. You are using the parabolic antenna now. You’ve already made it happen. What are the chances we can get the other ships into this?”
“Almost none, Sir, unless they return to port. No one can reach them, now.”
“That is too bad. I would love to know what they find out there. Look, send your query, then take the day off. Go have some fun. You will be fresh at it on duty tomorrow, regular hours, eight to four. That work?”
“Yes, Sir!” A blessing, for sure. Kelly Alexander’s hours. But he kept his face clear. A handy talent for any officer.
“Dismissed. Good luck Lieutenant Commander. With your brains you may not even need it, but luck often helps. Go!”
A quick salute and Jake was practically skipping all the way- up - to his small radio room. His text added that he needed the information by 0800, tomorrow. The ship’s clock was set on moon time, which originated on earth time. The whole Navy ran on it like… well, clockwork.
After he had sent it, he headed down the decks to his cadre of friends and family… He already knew it would work. Proving it for three months would have been a horrible waste of time. One day was child’s play. It was all he could do not to break into that happy dance…
CHAPTER 12
One thing a Navy man learns, first thing, is that if you see someone you like, you have to pursue quickly. Ingrained from the first sailors to hit the shores on distant lands, there was always limited leave, with fifty people lined up in pursuit of your possible love interest.
As Jake got to the group’s quarters, he was surprised to find Dyna by herself, working diligently on the program. She started to bring him up to speed, then, suddenly, recognized the new insignia on his cap and shoulders. She leaped to attention and saluted him, saying, “Sorry, Sir! I…”
He put a hand up, a big grin on his face, ashe said, “Hush, Dyna. You are practically family. In here, my rank does not matter.”
“Well, uhhh, okay. How did it happen?”
He told her of the use of his creation and how it had caught the Admiral’s eyes at the base. She was thrilled that it had worked, an
d she took the time to tell him about their own upward rank promises if they could make it work.
Oddly, though Jake was an electronics wizard, he was not a gamer. And he had no interest in sitting at a weapons station more boring than the radio room. But then, he was, singlehandedly on the Resolute, about to change all boring radio stuff.
However, he was part of the group for three reasons. Brilliant, family, and he could build or fix almost anything… including down to the bits and bytes of the computers, something a lot deeper than Dyna’s capabilities. But she exceeded him in the manipulation of the set up and software to make a computer fly.
Hers was the process of taking plug-in boards and putting a kit together, then tweaking it up to get the maximum from it. His was more like designing the board, the layout of each chip and resistor, the power system and such, basically preparing the parts that make up the kit. And, on a self contained ship, billions of miles from home, the replacements were very hard to find…
He suddenly grinned, remembering his encounter with Kelly.
“What’s up, Jake? You looked all dreamy there for a minute.”
He went pink. “Oh… sorry. Well, I met a … woman, today. I mean… it was love at first sight!”
She smirked. “You men. You mean lust.”
Quick, he teased, “Like you would know? I mean, she hiked all the way up to the radio room to help me with an experiment. The one that got me the promotion. Boomer’s sister, Kelly. Do you know her?”
“I know of her, but we never met. While we were in the academy, the tour of life sciences took us all the way to the end of the habitats. I saw her there, an apprentice something. I remembered her from college, a couple of classes, too. Seemed quiet. Sweet. She works in the laboratory, off the hospital, doesn’t she?”
“I… don’t know… Huh! I simply forgot to ask. She said something about feeding worms. My God, she is a stunner.”
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