by Jaxon Reed
-+-
We found the bulk of our forces from all three RSTs surrounding a low-slung concrete building in the center of the compound. It reminded me of a pillbox, like the kind used in past wars on Old Earth. A single metal door had slits on either side. The other three walls had slits, too. Somebody inside manned belt-fed machine guns sticking out of slits on all four sides. They kept up a steady fire on the cadets.
Budabudabudabudabudabudabudabudabudabudabudabuda!
“Not this again,” I groaned.
Several people took shots at the pillbox, trying to get a bullet through the slits. Most rounds bounced off the concrete.
One of the cadets stood up from behind a shot-up car and threw a hand grenade in the direction of the pillbox. It bounced off the wall and exploded harmlessly outside the door.
Budabudabudabudabudabuda!
I saw Sergeant Sledge behind a corner of a building with Dee Dee and several cadets. I ran over to them, drawing some fire from the gunner. A couple bullets ricocheted off my leg armor. My three bodyguards followed right behind me.
When we got to the wall, Sledge nodded at me.
“Four machine guns. One on either side of the box. No one’s been able to get close enough to take them out.”
“If we get a grenade through one of those slits, it’s ‘problem solved,’ right?”
He shook his head. “The slits are only about four inches tall. No one’s been able to lob a grenade in them. Even Saxby over there, and he’s a pitcher on the baseball team.”
He pointed his chin toward the cadet behind the shot-up car who’d thrown the grenade.
I looked at Dee Dee.
“I could rush him.”
She shook her head. “The force of the bullets would knock you down before you got close enough. And how are you going to pull the pin on a grenade when a machine gun is streaming bullets at you?”
“If you followed right behind me, maybe we could get close enough to the slit and you could drop a grenade in.”
She looked doubtful.
I persisted.
“I’d take the force of the bullets while you got close enough.”
She shrugged.
“It’s worth a try, I guess.”
“Okay. Let’s try it.”
She unhooked a grenade from one of the cadets who’d been assigned to her as a bodyguard. I holstered my pistol, unstrapped my rifle and cycled the bolt.
“I’ll go in shooting. You stay right behind me.”
Sergeant Sledge placed a hand on my arm.
“Can’t let you do this, Savitch.”
We stopped and stared at him.
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous. You two might get hurt.”
Dee Dee and I laughed.
“It’s okay, Sarge. We don’t get hurt easy.”
“No, I’m serious. The Vampire Detail is assigned to protect you, not put you in harm’s way.”
“I’ll be happy to note your concern in any after action report we have to write.”
I turned to Dee Dee.
“Ready?”
I turned to our half dozen body guards.
“Y’all stay here.”
Their eyes bulged. They seemed incredulous we were actually going to carry out the plan. No one disagreed with my suggestion to remain behind.
I waited a moment until the gunfire turned from our immediate area, holding my rifle in the firing position.
Budabudabudabudabudabuda!
Budabudabuda!
As soon as I sensed the fire moving off to our right, I ran out from the side of the building, Dee Dee right behind me. I saw the machinegun barrel poking out of one of the slits. I began firing at it, on the run.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!
The gunner saw me, turned the barrel toward me as I ran closer.
Budabudabudabudabudabuda!
A smattering of bullets hit my chest plate. I stumbled, more in surprise than anything. They hit hard. I regained my footing and kept shooting and running.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
More bullets hit me. Reality seemed to slip into slow motion. I noticed little things, like the barrel seemed to be moving in small circles. Bullets hit my chest, stomach, visor, legs, arms.
Thwip!
One found its way through a gap in the armor on my left arm, taking out part of my elbow.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
“Ahhhh!”
I got lucky. One of my rounds finally got through the slit, taking out the gunner.
Together, Dee Dee and I ran the rest of the way to the pillbox before one of the other gunners could take over his spot.
We reached the wall and slid up to it, heads ducking low. She pulled the pin on the grenade, reached up above her head and shoved it through the slit.
We heard it hit the concrete floor, bounce and clatter. The other gunners screamed when they realized what happened.
We covered our ears, and tucked our head into our knees.
KABLUMPF!
Fire and smoke spewed out the slits. The metal door flew open, too. Evidently it opened outward, rather than inward. Cheers sounded from all around as the cadets emerged from cover.
Dee Dee and I waited a moment for the smoke to clear, then went through the door. Inside, four bodies lay sprawled around the machineguns and a stairwell leading down.
Sergeant Sledge came through the door followed by an officer. She had dark skin, almost ebony, and appeared to be in her mid-twenties. Her name tag read, “Moore.” I remembered something in the pre-briefing about the mission being led by a Captain Moore. She headed up Alpha Company, evidently, and must have been in the first RST.
She glanced down at the bodies and looked over at me and Dee Dee. My armor was really scuffed now, having gone through two rounds of machinegun fire. Blood dripped from my elbow.
Captain Moore looked at Sergeant Sledge and quirked an eyebrow.
“I tried to stop ’em, ma’am. They wouldn’t listen. Mr. Savitch got us in at the gate, too.”
She turned back toward us.
“Just try not to get killed, you two.”
Captain Moore poked her head out the door and started shouting out names. Half a dozen cadets came running into the pillbox.
“Go down the hole. Clear it out. Be careful down there. Try not to shoot up any equipment.”
All six snapped her a salute and ran down the stairs. We heard muffled gunshots, screams.
A few minutes later over the com link someone said, “All clear, Captain!”
She nodded, and we followed her down the steps.
-+-
Downstairs we found a few dead and wounded statists who’d put up resistance, and an elaborate communications setup. Vid screens, com links, satellite feeds. Everything needed for contact with the outside world. A computer terminal near the front seemed to control everything. Its screen sat blank and unresponsive. To its left, several alphabetic characters seemed to float in the air.
Captain Moore spoke into her com link. “I need communications experts.”
Sergeant Sledge spoke up.
“If I may suggest, ma’am, get the O’Donnell boys down here. They know a thing or two about this kind of stuff.”
She nodded and made the call. A few minutes later the triplets came down the stairwell. They gathered around us at the terminal.
To the left of the terminal’s main screen, floating in the air, a jumble of numbers and letters slowly danced in a random pattern. Every letter in the alphabet, and every number from zero through nine drifted and floated and hovered, all at random. Each character stood about a quarter inch tall. They didn’t appear to be completely solid, but they weren’t holograms either. More than one of each letter and number danced around in the air. I noted some, like the vowels and ‘S’ and ‘T’ appeared more often than others.
The captain took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. I suspected she was fighting exasperation through a breathing exercise.
“Ha
s anybody here ever seen anything like this?”
Jason said, “I’ve read about it.”
We all turned and look at him. His eyes were fixed on the floating characters in amazement. He kept talking without taking his eyes away.
“If this is what I think it is, it’s got to be one of the highest examples of technology on the outer planets. I mean, this is Asiana-level tech. Maybe even Old Earth. It’s almost on par with the Janus rings.”
He stopped talking and watched the characters float around. I noted they never seemed to float too far away. They stayed in the general area to the left of the screen, as if confined by some invisible box.
Captain Moore took in another deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Okay, Mr. O’Donnell. What exactly are we looking at?”
Jacob blinked and seemed to notice the rest of us again.
“This, if I am not mistaken, is a quantum communicator.”
“Say again?”
“A quantum communicator. Basically, this would allow real time communication to any planet in the string, without using radio waves or light.”
He looked around at the other equipment in the room for a moment. When he turned back, he found all eyes on him and noticed us waiting expectantly.
He decided to explain more.
“Look, we can make phone calls between planets separated by one Janus ring easily, right? And if we let the signal buffer for a while, we can even pretend there’s not a delay, or a lag while talking. It almost seems like the other person is there in the room with us.
“But have you tried to hold a decent conversation with someone two or three planets down the string? The lag is atrocious. It’s becomes completely unbearable when you try to talk to someone a dozen planets down the string. This is why nobody this far out uses two-way communications with people on the inner planets. Can’t be done, at least not without a high level of frustration.
“But, with a quantum communicator it could be easily done. At least by text, dunno if by voice or hologram yet. I bet they’re getting there, though. We’ll probably see real time hologram calls with people on Old Earth in our lifetime.”
Dee Dee spoke up.
“So, how does it work?”
“You know about quantum mechanics?”
We shook our heads.
“Well, I’ll try to make it as simple as possible, as best I understand it. One of the things about quantum mechanics is, you can have a molecule in one location and its twin in another. When you adjust the first molecule, its twin will show the adjustment in the other location. This holds true regardless of distance. So, one molecule might be on Old Earth, the other here on New Texas.
“Now think of the communications you can do, especially if you can develop something that can be easily seen and manipulated. If these symbols have twins somewhere else, by arranging them into words you can essentially type out a message to someone on Old Earth, Bharata, or wherever in real time. No more waiting for radio communications to get there and back. You can hold an extremely long distance conversation without lag.”
He looked around, warming to the idea, growing excited.
“There should be a keyboard or voice input somewhere.”
He touched a button, and a virtual keyboard appeared off-center from the screen. Half the keyboard sat on the screen side, half on the floating characters side.
“Ha! I’m right! See? That keyboard can be used for either the regular computer screen, or the quantum communicator. When you start typing for the quantum side, the letters will arrange themselves into your words and sentences. When whoever is on the other end types, you’ll see the letters arrange into their message. So the first line would be yours, the second line would be their response, and so on.”
He smiled at us.
“This is absolutely phenomenal. From a technical standpoint, of course. Sucks the statists had it.”
Captain Moore took another deep breath, but I noticed she didn’t let it out slowly. I figured her frustration must be easing. Now she knew what to do.
“I want to know what they’ve communicated and to whom. I want to know what’s been communicated in return to them. And when we’re done, I want all this boxed up. We’re taking it back with us to New Bryan.”
Chapter Nine
I looked over at Dee Dee and smiled. She smiled back, but it seemed forced. We sat in a room inside the Health Science Center, the guests of honor at a large round table. We were in the spotlight, something neither of us cared for.
Or, I should say, something for which neither of us cared. Dang English class. To Professor Marceau, ending sentences with a preposition is to be avoided. So I discovered after turning in my first paper of the new semester.
We’d wrapped up the rest of our mission on the Atkinson Archipelago without too much more trouble. After a few more gunfights at the compound, the surviving statists were taken prisoner. I sucked the body of a dead statist dry, and my elbow got back to normal, bone and all.
The messages stored in the terminal at the compound’s nerve center were encrypted. We dismantled everything and shipped it back to the University to let their decryption team crack it. We heard the experts back home were excited for the opportunity to examine the quantum communicator closely.
Before going home we split up into smaller groups and spent the remaining days of Christmas break exploring the other islands in the Atkinson Archipelago, making sure no more statists were hiding out there. We found a few more, and unearthed some weapons caches, but nothing too exciting beyond that.
I found a couple of birds deep in the jungle on one of the islands. I thought they might not be classified yet, and took some pictures. When we got home, I found out they’d been discovered and named already. I was about a hundred years too late. Oh well. I took solace in the fact that at least they were rare, and not too many people have actually seen them in person.
Andrea and Jacob wound up in the same exploration party, and became close. By the start of the spring semester, they were exclusively dating one another. So our group hanging out at the penthouse grew in number by one.
The new semester started, and we went back to class. Besides English Composition, I signed up for Survey of Marine Exobiology on Pacifica, taught by Professor Kim. I liked her, and enjoyed her classes. Pacifica teemed with edible fish creatures, and its giant ocean helped feed many of the planets in the string. Lots of interesting stuff there. Plus, there was a strong Aggie connection with Chang’s fish farm success.
I also signed up for Human Anatomy, but decided to take it online. I figured it might freak out other students if they saw a vampire sitting in their Human Anatomy class, so online seemed to be the way to go for that one.
Finally, I made the mistake of signing up for Introduction to Logic. It’s actually a math class in disguise. It doesn’t deal with logic in the way I thought it would. I felt rather disappointed.
My thoughts were interrupted as another hologram popped into existence. A silver corporate communications icon slowly revolved in the air above the table, indicating a conference call in progress. Seats around the table started filling with holograms of people from all over the world and elsewhere.
Physician Kumai stood by a small lectern at the head of the table. Several other New Texas A&M Physicians sat nearby. Empty chairs quickly filled with holograms of Physicians on Athena and other parts of New Texas.
Physician Kumai informed us more would be listening in on the proceedings on Alexandria, but due to the lag in communications at that distance they would not partake in real time discussions. She said they might text in some questions, though.
One participant would be from Redwood.
Professor Cruz’s hologram popped into existence in the chair next to Dee Dee.
“Hi, Daddy!”
Just as he appeared to us as a hologram, we and others in the room would appear as holograms to him back on Redwood.
A few seconds ticked by as the communication buffe
r kicked in over the distance from our planet to the Janus ring to Redwood and back.
Then his hologram smiled as he saw us.
“Hello, Dee Dee!”
The last couple of chairs filled up as holograms popped into place around the table. Physician Kumai cleared her throat.
“It’s nine o’clock local time. Let’s begin.”
-+-
Unlike the State, the Universities were committed to sharing information. The State had forbidden research on vampires, going so far as to kill all the ones they could find. They squashed practically all knowledge that we existed, and prohibited human exploration and research on Redwood.
The Aggies defied that edict, of course, and Professor Cruz along with several other Scientists and their families continued researching Redwood without State permission.
I’d been “infected,” if that’s the right word, by one of the Scientists who’d originally been attacked by Fred, the giant hematophagous monkey who served as our “Typhoid Mary.” The Scientist almost killed me while I was visiting Orange, the last planet in the string and the State’s ultimate penal colony.
Evidently nobody knew he was hematophagous when they sentenced him to Orange. They just knew he was vicious and violent and had to go. Since prisoners were ignored and forgotten once they left the spaceport on Orange, nobody knew how many victims he’d fed on over the years. Nobody knew much about anything regarding the prisoners on Orange.
I was lucky and managed to escape, but not before he bit a chunk out of my neck, leaving me hematophagous. Dee Dee had been infected through a freak accident on a mission to observe Fred.
So here we were, the only known hematophagous humans outside Orange. We were allowed to freely exist provided we didn’t attack other humans. They gave us plenty of blood from the blood banks, though, to make sure we never we went hungry. Also, as part of the bargain, we let them study us at length.
This was to be the first conference discussing us, in which Physician Kumai would detail what her team had discovered so far. Privately, I hoped it would be the last one we’d be asked to attend. All eyes in the room were focused on us, both virtual and in the flesh.
Physician Kumai had a lot to report. For the first time, her team had had a chance to observe our rapid cell regeneration. After successfully avoiding getting shot at the Battle of Redwood, by the assassination drone, and in action on the Atkinson Archipelago, Dee Dee fell down the steps outside Price Faculty Hall and broke her arm shortly after we returned home. She made her way to the Health Science Center, where the Physicians delightedly fed her a baggie of blood while their instruments observed her arm mending itself.