“Yes, sir.”
“Son, that’s a crock of shit, and we both know it. Your medical sensors recorded a lower level of alcohol in your system than you claim. They also record elevated levels of stress higher than would be consistent with your story. You are not under oath. Lt. Solomon is being considered for a special assignment, and I need to understand him better than would normally be the case for a Force officer.”
“Yes, sir. Everything we said is true because that’s the way we saw it, but we left out the details. Even now, I don’t think I have the details right.”
“Do your best, son.” Commodore Davidson clearly intended to reassure the younger officer.
“If you read the deposition, you know who was with me that evening. We did indeed find Lt. Solomon at the bar. He was sitting with an attorney. Some family member was in some kind of trouble, and he was trying to figure out a way to help. I bought him a drink for old time’s sake. He certainly bought me enough when we are at the academy. I don’t think he touched more than a sip or two.”
“That would be consistent with our findings. My guess is the attorney was for his father. The old man was worthless as a father even if he did have a spotless military record,” the Commodore said. “I served with his father. He had financial problems after he retired. That’s probably what the attorney was dealing with.”
“Two pirates came in the bar. I recognized them as Pierre LaMarche’s brother, Anthony and Anthony’s fire control officer. I don’t remember his name.”
“We have it,” the older man said.
“Solomon tried to avoid being recognized, but they spotted him and came over to him. They taunted him and insulted him and the attorney. They shoved the attorney off his chair to the floor. Greg stood and blocked them so the attorney could regain his feet. He turned his back on them and attempted to shake the attorney’s hand. Anthony punched him in the back. Greg turned and suggested that they not do that again. The attorney left. Greg turned away from the pirates again. He really was trying to avoid a fight. His hands were out away from his body. He carries that gun in his sleeve. He could have blown them away, but he didn’t. I don’t understand why not. Anthony reached up and grabbed Greg by the collar and tried to throw him to the floor. Honest to God, sir, what happened next happened so fast I don’t think I caught it all. He can’t have moved so fast. We figured we were too drunk to see it.”
“He can move that fast, and you weren’t that drunk. Do you know what he did with his summers off from the Academy while the rest of you were soaking up the sun in the tropics with half naked members of the opposite sex?”
“No, sir.”
“He trained with a Marine unit specializing in hand-to-hand combat. While he was there he also learned to appreciate antique weapons. The Marines taught him to use the gun he carries. As a teen he had Marines teaching his gym classes. He is that good. Then what happened?”
“He broke their arms against overturned tables. He tried to walk away, but they came after him with knives. He took the knives and threw them into the wall over the bar. He broke LaMarche’s leg. He tried to walk away, but they came after him again with their bare hands. One of them produced a pistol, and he took it away. I didn’t see how he did it. I swear I didn’t. He could have shot them with it, but he didn’t. The pistol came flying through the air at me and I caught it.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I still have it, sir.”
“What happened next?”
“He went nuts, sir. He body slammed them into walls. He threw them on the floor. Every time they came at him they wound up hitting something hard. He smashed them into each other. They weren’t giving up. He still didn’t shoot them. He could have but he didn’t. He broke their necks with blows from his hands. His bare hands, sir, he broke their necks. It happened so fast. Suddenly it was over, and there were two dead bodies on the floor. Maybe ten seconds later Pierre LaMarche entered the bar. He saw Greg. He looked at his brother dead on the floor with his broken neck. It seemed like forever. He drew a pistol and aimed it at Greg. Some Shore Patrol Marine we hadn’t noticed before standing in the darkness next to the door chopped the gun out of Pierre’s hand. Pierre fled, and Greg ran after him. The Marine ordered me and my men out of the bar. My men gave chase. I was the last to leave. The Marine handed me Pierre’s gun and shoved me outside.”
“Do you know who the Marine was?”
“No, sir.”
“Neither do we, but your story matches other witnesses.”
“So, you and your shipmates did nothing to assist?”
“Sir, I can only speak for myself, but I was afraid if I tried to help I would get in the way. He seemed to have things well in hand by himself.”
“Then what happened?”
“Pierre made it to his ship which was disguised as a merchantman’s yacht. He left before we could get to him. Greg followed in his P I ship. It takes longer to get a destroyer off the ground than it does a P I, and we followed as quickly as we could. I don’t know how he did it, but his ship’s engines were warming up before he got to it. I swear the ship knew it was taking off in a hurry. Before he jumped to hyper drive, Greg hailed us and told us where he thought Pierre was going. Our task force caught up with him there, and you know the rest.”
“We understand from official reports Lt. Solomon had engaged the pirates when you arrived.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the pirates had sustained substantial losses.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lt. Solomon had exhausted all his weapons in that action.”
“I believe so, sir.”
“What did he do when you arrived?”
“He jumped into hyper drive and fled, sir.”
“What would you have done at that point, son?”
“Sir, I doubt I would have had the courage to get to that point, but I would have done as he did.”
“Son, there’s a world of difference between courage and anger. Anger will get you killed. Courage can keep you from getting killed. What you saw was not courage. It was anger. Anger makes you stupid. Chasing a pirate force with a single ship, even as well armed as Lt. Solomon’s, ranks as stupidity. He got away with it from dumb luck. Had you arrived a few minutes later, Greg would have been killed, and we would have lost one of our best men. That is all. Thank you for coming. You’re dismissed.”
“Yes, sir. Excuse me sir, but he did lead us to the pirate base of operations.”
“Which is why he did not get dishonorably discharged.”
The recording ended, and the cabin was silent.
Katherine asked, “Now what do we do?”
The computer answered. “Send your co-pilots after them. You were ordered to stay here. Brownie will know what to do once she gets there. Samantha will need to deal with Myra.”
Blondie hailed Brownie, “Brownie! Take a set of jet packs and follow him.”
“Why?” Brownie asked in confusion.
“Take Sam with you! I’ll explain as you go.”
The computer spoke. “Tell them not to touch him. A touch will set him off. They can only talk. If they try anything else they will be killed if not by one by the other.”
Brownie replied, “What the hell is going on?”
“Our buddy Greg is a walking time bomb. Don’t let him go off or everything we worked for will be wasted,” Katherine replied anxiously.
“Oh, shit,” was all Brownie could say as she and Sam raced through the familiar process of donning the jet packs.
Brownie announced they were away.
Katherine suddenly thought of something. “Independent action,” she said addressing the computer. “You took independent action. Computers aren’t supposed to. Computers are supposed to react to specific commands and conditions, not initiate them. It’s like there’s a human mind hidden in there somewhere. Are you a brain ship?”
The computer’s voice was carefully modulated when it replied. “No, Katherine, I
am not a brain ship. There are no brain ships, although the concept was the inspiration behind my programming.”
Blondie interrupted. “What’s a brain ship?”
Katherine answered, “It’s a popular science fiction concept. The idea is to encase human brains which would be unable to survive in their bodies due to congenital defects or disease in a titanium tube filled with a special fluid. Their nerve endings are directly attached to the ship, and they control the ship as if it were their own body.”
Blondie shuddered. “Ugggh.”
The computer responded, “Actually, the concept makes sense for the reason you mentioned. Computers are not intended to initiate action. Humans are. Except this is a situation for which I have been programmed. I am responding to Greg’s agitated state as I am programmed to respond.”
“How is that?” Katherine asked.
“If Greg, or any of you with subcutaneous sensors, exceeds recommended blood pressure, heart rate, temperature or respiration, I am programmed to provide a variety of remedies. I continually evaluate threats to the ship, its cargo and personnel. I have a wide array of authorized actions, up to and including shutting down life support should the need arise. In combat, my directives are to preserve this ship and its inhabitants. When Greg downloaded the operating software from his P I ship, he took the combined ingenuity of centuries of programmers. The P I ship had the most sophisticated programming of any warship in history. I may look like a cargo ship, but I have the programming of a warship.”
“Under what circumstance would you shut down life support?” Blondie asked tentatively.
“To avoid capture.”
“Is that the only condition? What about mutiny?” Katherine asked.
“If the captain were already dead, yes.”
Blondie asked as a new thought occurred to her, “Wait a second, you know the emotions of everyone on the ship?”
“Only those of you with subcutaneous transponders. Remember, I carry a lot more computing power than most of the ships you are used to flying. All current and former military personnel like yourselves have them. I can read emotions to the limit that conclusions can be drawn from heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, respiration, EKG and EEG data and some blood chemicals.”
Katherine asked warily, “But you can learn a lot from that can’t you?”
“Like your feelings for our dear veterinarian? Yes.”
Katherine blushed.
“Conflicted there aren’t we? Have no fear. Even though your heart skips a beat when you see him, he does not feel the same way about you. He fancies Gloria. Your relationship with Sam is secure. She worships the ground you walk on.”
“How do you know about Dr. Miller?” Blondie asked.
“Former military. Went to vet school on his military benefits. He has a transponder. He has been overexerting himself lately. He’s not in any real danger, but when you get dirt-side some R & R with a consenting female would be good for him.”
The women sat in silence as they watched Greg’s small tug travel across the void to Myra’s ship. While hardly a small ship by the standards of twenty-first century space flight, the warship was dwarfed by the cargo ship.
“Computer?” Katherine asked.
“Yes?”
“Do you mean to tell me that Greg wrote programs at what had to be a very high level all by himself while he patrolled for pirates?”
“Not hardly. He built on the efforts of one of the most brilliant design teams ever assembled.”
“This I have to hear,” Blondie said.
“To understand my programming, you need to go back to the team that designed and built the Pirate Interdiction warship. Saturn Industries responded to a request for a proposal from the Federation for a small ship that would track down and kill pirates. Piracy was such a huge problem it threatened to split the Federation if something was not done to stop it. The bid request itself was an unusual document. Normally a Federation request for proposal weighs in at several hundred pages of specifications. This one was short. The bid request was a single page. It gave a mission, development deadline and budget per unit. The bid winner was promised an initial order of twenty ships.”
“That’s a small order for a project that size. What makes this special?” Blondie asked.
“Saturn’s Vice President for Product Development had recently lost her brother and his family to a pirate attack. She saw this as a way to avenge their deaths. When Saturn’s board of directors refused to let her manage the project herself, citing her importance to other projects, she immediately resigned and joined the project as the unpaid volunteer commander.”
Blondie raised her eyebrow and said, “Commander?”
“That is the appropriate word. She moved the project development team off company property to a building adjacent to the campus of Federation Technical University. She apparently spent a lot of her own money on the initial stages of establishing the project.”
“She must have been one powerful lady,” Katherine commented.
“She was not known for being particularly ladylike, but she had clout and knew how to use it. She raided Saturn’s engineering staff and the faculties of a dozen engineering schools to build her team. Many of the people she recruited were unpaid volunteers who spent their own money to commute from their regular jobs to contribute to the project. She employed the latest technologies to enable those who could not travel to the site to participate in design conferences. Under her direction, the project took on a life of its own. One year after the project started, six months ahead of schedule, the team delivered its design to Saturn management.”
“How did they do that so fast?” Blondie asked.
“Some of the engineers did not leave the building for the entire year. The personal price many of these people paid was horrific. Remember that every single one of these engineers had lost family or friends to pirates. That was a recruitment criteria. This was a vendetta. This was revenge, and as it turned out, revenge was sweet. Saturn immediately produced a prototype without waiting for Federation approval. The prototype flew six months later.”
“That’s phenomenal!” Katherine exclaimed.
“Even more phenomenal, it saw combat on its first test flight. One of the engineers was a retired Space Force fighter pilot. He insisted on piloting the test. The project commander, who had never fired a weapon in anger, was in the fire control seat. They stumbled into a pirate assault on a convoy of freighters. There is some debate as to whether finding the assault was truly an accident or whether the ship’s software was smart enough to detect it and direct them to it. The retired fighter pilot who had not flown in a decade and the project commander who had never fired on another ship waded into the middle of the fray and started shooting. They destroyed two of the pirate ships. The rest fled. The little warship’s reputation was born.”
“Was the software that good?”Katherine asked.
“The team working on the ship’s software pushed beyond the edge of known technology and developed an operating system that could learn. The system evaluated its experiences and learned from them. This ability was what made the Saturn P I so successful. It was smarter than its pilots.”
“Including Greg?”
“Including Greg. Greg had an advantage that none of the other pilots could claim. One of the engineers contributing remotely to the project was located on the research station where Greg grew up. Following Greg’s mother’s sudden gruesome death, this engineer sought to distract the grief stricken young boy and divert his attention to the development of the new ship. It worked. Greg sublimated his grief and applied it to the problems the engineer tossed at him. Greg followed every step of the development of this ship from the engineer’s home office. They spent days arguing over the details of the ship’s design. Some of the features in the ship’s software may have started as Greg’s ideas. It was an exciting time for Greg. His purpose for going to the Academy was threefold. He wanted to get off that station. He wanted to fly a P
I, and he wanted to avenge his mother’s death.”
“I think I am beginning to understand,” Katherine said.
“Unlike the other pilots who were afraid of a ship that was smarter than they were, Greg loved it. Most of the other pilots turned off many of the more advanced features of the software. Greg, on the other hand, enabled all the ship’s features and became a beta tester and developer on his own. Every time he came to a Federation base, he communicated his suggested changes and software ideas with the project members, most of whom had since moved on to the construction of Saturn’s huge new orbiting shipyard project. When Greg left the Force, he downloaded the entire contents of that ship’s data storage and uploaded them to me.”
“I guess that makes you smarter than us,” Blondie said.
“Yes, but it is bad manners to make a big deal about it. I won’t mention it again, if you don’t.”
Greg arrived at Myra’s ship. He hailed Myra to initiate docking procedures. The ship’s sensors told them that Brownie and Sam were only a few minutes behind him racing at full throttle to close the gap. The jet packs’ greater speed and the women’s greater level of practice with the packs enabled them to launch more quickly than he had and travel faster. Greg neglected to turn off his suit microphone. The four shuttle pilots heard him huffing and puffing as he awkwardly passed through the air lock and entered Myra’s cabin. He did not bother to remove the helmet, but merely opened the face shield when he arrived at her flight deck. Three months of repressed anger coursed through his body in a torrential firestorm of fury.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing? What right do you have to commandeer me and my ship for some half baked lame brained scheme to save mankind from itself? Who died and made you king? You think you’re Brigham Young, or Moses or Jim Jones, or some shit? What fucking idiot thought this up? Do you have a clue how much trouble we’re in?”
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 6