Earth II - Emergence

by Ray Jay Perreault

  “Shirley, how are the technical modification coming along?” Hagerly asked Admiral Mears.

  “Sir, we’ve committed the full manufacturing ability of the capital fleet, and we’ve installed rail guns and lasers on each of them. We wrestled about what to do with the supply ships. They aren’t large enough for a large crew, but they are fast and maneuverable. We’ve remade them into attack ships, like the old PT boat philosophy. They have considerable power, and we’ve split them into two groups. Half are armed with just a moderate laser and the other half with a rail gun. Neither weapon is as powerful as the ones that we have in the capital ships, but we’re hoping they can do damage in attack formations. Sir, with all this automation we have one weakness. Each capital ship will have squadrons of supply ships, and for every capital ship we lose in a conflict, we’ll lose a large portion of our offensive and defensive abilities.”

  “I guess that we can’t afford to lose any ships, and more so, the people we have on them. Let’s face it; we’re guessing there are about 250,000 people left on Earth, and we were given a huge space fleet and an army of robots. We have to use every man and woman to man them and get the most protection from them,” added President Patterson.

  “SIMPOC was working on a method to focus the propulsion system into a weapon, what’s happening with that?” The President asked.

  “Sir, SIMPOC has passed the responsibility to develop that weapon onto me,” Beta-Zero interjected.

  “As I asked, what’s the status?” Patterson asked again.

  “Mr. President. It is a very complex power generation and power system onboard the capital ships. SIMPOC was able to demonstrate some capabilities, but we’re unsure about targeting, range and effectiveness. Much work needs to be done, but the fleet’s priorities have been targeted towards defensive tactics and little time has been allocated for weapon research,” said Beta-Zero.

  “Hagerly, change that. We need that weapon,” the President said with a firm glare towards the Chairmen of the Joints Chiefs.

  “Yes, sir. Admiral Monson have Beta-Zero work with SIMPOC on that weapon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Monson said with a head nod.

  “Are we also are doing the right thing with the Izod that are trapped on Joan’s ship? Joan has suggested that Captain Drummond take them back. She is also suggesting that we need to do something about the Terest. We don’t want a full-scale surprise attack from them and Julius,” said President Patterson.

  “Sir, and we don’t want to get in the middle of a war,” stated Admiral Monson.

  “Mr. President, we have to seriously consider Joan’s suggestion that she go to the Terest and find out what is going on. They know her, and we need to convince them of our neutrality. If we just sit here, we set ourselves up for unpleasant surprises,” added Admiral Hagerly.

  “Yes Nial, I agree. Reluctantly, but I agree. What about the Izod?” The President asked.

  “Sir, I want to keep Lester and Shirley in our system working with the new crewmembers and developing their strategies. They still have a ton of work to, if we’re going to have any kind of defense,” said Hagerly. Then he looked at Admiral Monson and said, “Lew, I agree with Captain Herl that we send Captain Drummond. She has come a long way, and she deserves the opportunity to work on her own.”

  “Ok, Admiral. I agree,” said Admiral Monson.

  “Sounds like we agree with her recommendations. I told her to proceed unless we disagreed. Just to close the loop, confirm with her that we agree with her plan and using Drummond,” directed the President.

  Mars Colony

  Ophelia woke in the private suite of rooms that she and her husband, Isaacs shared. It was a good ‘wake-up.’ Sometimes a person wakes up suddenly and finds themselves disoriented, other times, they wake up in a fright and feel the urgent need to do something. But, the good ‘wake-ups’ are gentle and peaceful. Today was one of those.

  Ophelia laid in bed enjoying the peace and sounds of Isaacs in the kitchen making breakfast. He loved to cook, and breakfast was when he excelled.

  Things were going well on the Mars colony. They had survived the horrible virus on Earth without losing one person. In a way, the horrific events that left them isolated were the best ones that could have happened from their perspective. The huge manufacturing ship that stayed in orbit providing them with anything they needed and the 212 Cow-Robots that they were given after the virus had given them other capabilities beyond anything they had when the colony was created.

  For the Mars colony, they went through periods mourning the huge loss on Earth, followed by jubilation about what they were accomplishing on Mars. It wasn’t a balanced comparison. Each of them lost friends and relatives due to the virus. Their loss only amplified the emotional separation they felt from their past.

  Their physical separation was no longer an issue. They could travel between Mars and Earth in a matter of hours. In some ways that made the colony members feel closer to Earth, but because they had lost all of those who were important to them, remaining on Mars seemed the logical choice and didn’t remind them of the loss.

  The colony had gone from living day-to-day, fighting for survival against the elements to a relatively worry-free existence. The underground structure was fully functional. Even though it now met all their needs, construction was continuing. It seemed that someone always needed more space and the Cow-Robots were more than capable of expanding the space. They no longer needed to live on the surface and most of the original Mars colony habitats had been abandoned. The entire colony lived underground and enjoyed it.

  Travel from Mars to Earth had also changed their world. Using the alien ships, they were able to move back and forth between the colony and Earth on a regular basis. The size of her colony had grown to over 100 people covering all disciplines. Mars was starting to turn into a small town. Even Ophelia and Isaacs were able to attend his sister’s birthday on Earth, something unheard of before the virus.

  That was why Ophelia had a good wake-up.

  When the Mars colony reached the point where their existence wasn’t threatened daily, the minds of the scientists went in a different direction. Earth had been attacked by an alien race that was intent on harvesting the planet. They didn’t even take the time to see if there was intelligent life on Earth before they sent thousands of robots to begin the harvesting.

  Since that invasion, Humanity found itself in a different place. The thousands of ships the alien invaders gave them thrust the human-race into the age of interstellar travel. One they weren’t prepared for, but one they had to survive. The need to survive became evident after the second alien encounter. Earth had been attacked, not by one enemy but by two. The first attack was a surprise, but the second one by the other intelligent computer named Julius was a more threatening surprise. It was true they needed to find ways to deal with the new alien encounters, but they also had to remind themselves that Julius was still there. The worst part was that he was still focused on his two perceived threats to his existence — the remaining humans and SIMPOC the other intelligent computer.

  Mars had found another mission, beyond exploration and mining precious elements. Their new mission was developing a powerful weapon. One that might be able to change the course of the next battle. A battle that everyone was convinced was going to happen. Unfortunately, no one knew when or with whom.

  The first plan was to station one of the huge manufacturing ships over the colony and use its resources to build a rail gun similar to the ones onboard the capital ships. But that soon became the wrong choice. A land-based rail gun was too limited. It had a narrow firing angle and the chances of an alien invader being close enough for a slug traveling 25,000 miles per hour to be a threat was low. The plan was to provide a weapon that the fleet could use.

  With its separation from Earth, it was unlikely that Mars would be an active participant in the early stages of an invasion. In order to contribute, their only choice was to create a unique weapon that would contrib
ute to their mutual defense.

  The scientists on Mars soon came up with an alternative. The rare elements they were mining on the planet were excellent for one weapon, a solid-state laser. They had the materials and excess energy to build a huge one.

  The Cow-Robots were ideal workers and quickly were able to modify the capital ship in orbit. The first order was to move the Cow-Robots onto the surface of Mars, where the colonists were eager to put them to work. The next step was to modify the interior of the huge ship for the five large Ruby Rod Lasers with Neodymium dopant. The modifications turned out to be easy to accomplish. The aiming problem would be solved with a set of 99.9999% reflective mirrors with the coatings tailored to the laser’s frequency.

  The energy supply could provide enough power to fire short 100 MS pulses at a rate of four per second. With five lasers they could fire a 20-petawatt pulse which lasted 1-millionth of a second.

  It couldn’t blow up a ship, but within that 1-millionth of a second, there would be a tiny hole completely through the ship. By firing numerous quick paced pulses around a small target area, the laser would produce a good-sized hole in a short time. If that hole was in a vulnerable location, the ship would quickly become useless, or perhaps blow up.

  The resulting configuration would give the capital Ship a laser with an effective angle of 42 degrees. Some losses were caused by the aiming mirrors, but they would be acceptable. The mirrors were limited in their use. The powerful laser would wear out the mirrors quickly, and they would need to be replaced. The design allowed replacement within 3 minutes by two Cow-Robots standing by with the spare parts.

  The approach still had inherent limitations. After all, firing a laser at a target millions of miles away would be a waste of energy. The device was most effective with anything within a hundred thousand miles. To be effective at that range, accurate targeting was needed, after all, it was the time on target that allowed it to penetrate any surface. If the target was closer than the effect was greater.

  If the enemy was within the target range, the laser could do a lot of damage, but if it was beyond the effective range, then it would be nothing more than a light show.

  Issacs brought the coffee into Ophelia, and she enjoyed her first cup of the day, anticipating the first test firing of the huge weapon.

  President Forms Government

  “I want to welcome of you to this meeting. I wish that I knew where to start. We all know what we’ve been through and there are no words to describe what we’ve had to endure. We are through that horror, and it appears that the virus has been turned off. We have all lost family and friends, but we are now in the position of rebuilding our lives, our country, and the world. That is why I’ve called this meeting.

  “We are still the United States, and we have many people across the country that need our support, and to be honest we need theirs. We must get organized, bring our resources back online, begin helping others and rebuild our country.

  I have had meetings with just about all of you so what I’m announcing today shouldn’t be a surprise. We are forming a new Government. This new Government will be different. We have a different world around us, and it needs to reflect the reality of our situation. I want a similar structure to what was before the virus, but it will have to be modified. Instead of the 53 states that we called home, I’ve broken the responsibilities into ten regions. Each region will have two representatives. One will fill the role of a member of the House, and the other will function as the senator. Each will assume the roles typical of the two governing bodies.

  “I will use this group as my counsel and advisors. I’ve also decided to make Admiral Nial Hagerly my Vice President. Admiral Monson will assume the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the role of Commander of the Earth Defense Force. Aside from commanding the EDF, he’ll be responsible for any other military operations that we can put together.

  “It will take a while to get this structure up and running, but that’s the direction that I’m going. Where we’ve been able to contact locals, we’re using them. In the areas where we haven’t contacted anyone, we’ll continue trying.

  “As we establish contact, we’ll provide what little support we can, and they must accept that we’ll be providing little. Many of the areas will function independent of us, and we hope that over time we’ll be able to bring the country back together.”

  Do any of you have questions?”

  “Mr. President, I have one,” asked a tall man in the back of the room.

  “We met earlier, aren’t you Wally Farmer?”

  “Yes, sir. We met earlier; I’m from Des Moines. I’ve heard rumors about the White House? Can you confirm them?”

  President Patterson knew the subject would come up, but the answer wasn’t easy.

  “I suspect that you’ve all heard that I destroyed the White House. That is correct. A local warlord was running a human trafficking ring in D.C., and he took over the White House. I didn’t have the resources to deal with him directly, but we had to stop him. He was enslaving people and murdering others. He was crazy, and I dealt with him, with a couple of missiles. We are in a new world, and we must deal with threats as they occur. Any other questions?”

  “Sir, I have one,” a woman from the right side of the group said as she raised her hand.

  “Your name is?” President Patterson asked.

  “Lorain Tuttle, from Florida.”

  “Go ahead, Lorain.”

  “Sir, a lot has happened, and I don’t know if all of us are on the same page. Could you summarize everything that has happened since the virus?”

  The president shuffled a little from one foot to the other, smiled and responded, “Have many days do I have?”

  A soft chuckle washed over the room.

  “I’ll give it a shot but bear with me a little.”

  The president took a deep breath and looked around the room. Everyone seems to sit up a little and paid more attention to him.

  “I don’t think I need to talk much about the virus. It appeared out of nowhere, and we all understand the horror it brought. What many of you may not know is that two powerful computers were under development when the virus killed their programmers. These were the first two thinking computers, and they are capable of much more than any computer ever built. One of them named SIMPOC turned out to be a huge benefit for us. Unfortunately, another computer named Julius has turned into a threat. SIMPOC was programmed to help humans, and Julius is paranoid, to say the least.

  “Their programming was using a new method. A mental map was transferred from their programmer to the computer’s organic processors. The map gave them paths to follow for their decision making. For SIMPOC, his programmer was a good guy and thus so is SIMPOC. For Julius, his programmer was a little paranoid and when Julius was left alone that personality trait dominated. Now it appears that he has two threats to his existence. One is SIMPOC who is the only other intelligent computer, and the other is the remainder of the human race.”

  After that statement, it seemed that the entire audience took a collective breath.

  Then the President continued, “After the virus hit, we had to face the second whammy, the robot invasion. I’ll cut to the chase. We were invaded by an alien race called the Jakeel. We found out later what their plan was. They sent probes to analyze the living creatures on Earth. Apparently, they are a huge race that has investigated hundreds of alien worlds, and they never found any intelligence. They assumed there was none on Earth, and their probes engineered a virus to kill off the alpha predator; us. Then they sent the Cow-Robots to begin the harvesting.

  “The remnants of our Air Force and Navy fought hard and did their best. Our military faced them in numerous battles during which SIMPOC helped us a lot, but Julius wanted revenge on SIMPOC and us. SIMPOC was able to gain control of some of the robots and their ships, but Julius was also able to. Julius saw that as an opportunity to gather resources to wipe us out.

  “Early on the crew
from the Space Station Oasis commanded by Joan Herl and her husband Tom, were forced to evacuate the remnants of the station crew to Earth. The moon colony along with Bill Thompson and his wife Sally evacuated the moon colony and came home also.

  “Joan, her husband Tom, and SIMPOC followed Julius to the homeworld of the Jakeel. They helped the Jakeel defend themselves from Julius and in return they gave us the resources they used for the invasion. Unfortunately, Julius escaped.

  “I hesitate to call our relationship with the Jakeel as a truce. It’s more like an acknowledgment of each other’s existence. But that can always change.

  “While that was happening our local warlord in Washington attacked us at Camp David, and when he took over the White House, I made the tough call to deal with him.

  “After we got the alien resources, we had to position ourselves in case Julius returned. We began to explore the Galaxy around us, and we encountered two alien civilizations. Unfortunately, they aren’t friendly with each other, and we’ve found ourselves in the middle.

  “The second alien race named the Izod came into the outer reaches of our solar system for a meeting. While the meeting was occurring, the first race that we met, named the Terest, came out of nowhere and attacked our ships and the Izod. They destroyed the Izod’s ship, but we were able to destroy them in the conflict.

  “In the middle of the conflict Julius also appeared out of the blue and joined in. He was able to escape before our ships could deal with him.