by Chris Hechtl
Jack nodded.
“What I was looking into was a means to do so with a person, specifically a Neo. I had started it as a chimera project, but when I ran the initial design studies, well, see for yourself,” he said, showing Jack a 3D profile.
Jack reared back, eyes wide in surprise. “What the hell?” the creature was part humanoid, part cuttlefish: wide eyes, beak, tentacles, tentacles around the mouth.
“Yes, I get that reaction. It's one reason I stopped the project actually. That and because the bone structure wasn't holding up in simulated tests as I'd hoped. I …,” he looked a bit chagrined. “I was looking into the chrometophores of cephalopods, their ability to change the color and texture of their skin to match their surroundings, also their dazzle ability.” He hit a switch on the holo projector and the creature faded out, then dazzled brightly with patterns. Jack tore his eyes away from the display. “Turn it off,” he ordered, hands pushing the projector away.
“Ah, yes, I get that reaction as well,” the chimp replied, clearing the image. “I had the other idea of using a cephalopod for their brain but also for their ability to squeeze through tight areas. You only have to worry about the beak. So, this guy or gal,” he waved a hand then simulated a narrow space, “could get through a space—think of the tactical advantage there—or hide in that area.”
“But it's not viable?”
“No. Not presently. They need too much water to keep hydrated, and they have an alien thought process. Granted one we've been studying for centuries, but still too alien for us to use and trust.”
“Okay so …”
“But I did think if we could apply some of what I learned to what we currently have …,” he turned the holo project back on and typed into a keyboard that was projected in front of him to call up a series of files. After a moment a series of different Neo species appeared one after another, then they got smaller and slotted in to a box grid above the main display. They turned in synchronous display slowly.
Jack studied them. They were all night black: wolves, various cat species …. He frowned thoughtfully. “No apes or humans?”
“We can, but the bioform is harder to do, and well, these species are instinctive ambush hunters.”
“Okay,” Jack put a finger on a black jaguar, then on a black leopard. They were linked with a line and labeled panther. “Interesting.”
“The fur isn't really black; it's clear. The skin pigment is controlled by the chrometophores in the skin. I'm still attempting to refine the design. I'm afraid it won't be as effective as I'd like; nothing is ever perfect you understand.” Jack nodded. “I am so glad you aren't thinking of miracles here,” the chimp breathed.
“Doc, you are doing wonders here. I take it from this that you've ironed out the production issues with the baseline species? That is why you are experimenting more?”
“Well,” the chimp drawled, eyes still locked on the creatures on his display. “Not quite. The process of refinement will go on for years I'm afraid. Years and years as we add new traits to fix problems in each generation. And fix the fixes if it comes down to that,” he said.
Jack winced internally at the idea and the open-ended cost. There was a call within his own ranks to end the financing of the Neos after the war. He wasn't certain the company could afford to give Doctor Glass a blank check for much longer.
Still, he smiled and nodded to the man. “Good work, Doctor. Keep up the good work. Your people are doing their part to help win this war. Now I've got to get back to doing my part.”
“Um yes, uh, okay,” the chimp was all eyes on the images. Jack rolled his eyes as he left him to it.
<>V<>
Doctor Glass scowled after Jack had left. It hadn't gone the way he'd hoped. It had gone better than expected in some ways, but Jack had acted just as Wendy had predicted, with a hint of revulsion and concern. He shook his head. The more he interacted the old man, the more he believed Wendy was right. It was time for a changing of the guard. Time for a new generation to step up and take control.
Time old men stepped aside.
<>V<>
“Finally a light at the end of the tunnel. I truly think we might win this. And I'm now thinking I might live to see the end of it,” Isaac said over the heavily encrypted laser link.
“Hopefully,” Jack replied with a frown.
He had briefed the general on Doctor Glass's idea of new strains of super soldiers with a cloak ability. The general nodded. “We had the idea a few times over the decades. Never did get the thing to work well. The suits were a bitch and major power hogs.”
“Probably why we haven't run into many with the A.I.,” Jack answered minutes later.
“We had some in the spec ops communities. I wonder whatever happened to them?” the general mused, rubbing his chin. He scowled briefly. “I think I better have someone find out, discretely of course.”
Jack nodded. “Of course.”
“I'm still waiting on antigravity and force shields, Jack,” General Murtough teased with a trace of a grin.
Jack rolled his eyes. “I've told you before, Isaac; it's too large for fighters and shuttles right now. I wish, but if wishes were fishes …,” he shrugged. “I suppose we could make some sort of shield. I don't know how effective it would be, if it would interfere with communications or stuff inside …,” he shrugged. “Essentially we need to refine the design. Miniaturize it more, make it more efficient, the usual. But we don't have the time. Or,” he grimaced, “in the case of the government, the money apparently.”
“War is the mother of invention they say,” Isaac said with a cocked head. “I'm surprised someone hasn't come forward with something yet.”
“War necessitates invention to break seemingly impossible deadlocks. To come up with the 'ultimate game changer.'“ Jack shook his head. “You know better.”
“Still, having shields and antigrav would be nice. You've got fighters, which is damn silly since they are for space,” the general retorted minutes later.
“We don't have the blueprints. It would take months, possibly years, to come up with them, weeks longer to make a prototype, then debug it, then test it. Then so on and so forth for each design run. Then get it into production, which has its own inherent bugs and problems.” Jack shook his head. “We've got to go with what we've got. KISS. Keep it simple.”
Isaac eyed him and then exhaled slowly. “Agreed,” he said in a resigned tone.
“Save it for the next war, General; we've got all we can do fighting this one. And may I remind you,” Jack paused as the general turned his eyes on him, “had I actually gone through with that earlier, when you had dangled the contract out years ago, guess who'd have the tech now?” His finger curled and then pointed down to the Earth.
The general's face twisted in disgust. “Okay, you've got me there.”
“Yeah. So I think it's good that the enemy doesn't have it. He's going to be hard enough to beat as he is.” Jack waved a hand. “I'll give you more of the details when I get to the capital.”
“Capital?”
“I've been called to testify again. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon. Roman and Zack have one more presentation for me to endure tomorrow morning before I head out. I'm hoping to have lunch with my kids, but you know how that goes,” he said. He felt his heart twist a bit at Isaac's expression. He could kick himself for reminding his old friend about family.
Isaac merely nodded sagely however. “See you back soon then.”
“Until then,” Jack replied, signing off.
<>V<>
The following morning after his conversation with Isaac, Jack had a follow-up meeting with Roman, Zack, and Max. Right from the get-go, he could tell from the small group that they were up to something. “Dad, I finally found a use for all that antimatter you've been stockpiling all these years,” Zack said with a tight smile.
“Somehow I'm not happy to hear you say that.”
“You shouldn't be. Using it the way we want to will be
the equivalent of a kamikaze strike. And it has to be hand delivered. We haven't found any way to get it into where it needs to be to go off any other way—not with any sort of chance of success,” Zack said with finality in his voice.
Jack closed his eyes in pain for a long moment. His nostrils flared as he took a few cleansing breaths.
“Need a drink?” Roman asked sympathetically.
“I don't think it'd help much,” Jack said as his eyes opened. “We've already begun shipping antimatter weapons to the Lagrange points to use them in the bombardments to help break the deadlock. This is apparently something more?” He looked from his son to Roman, then finally to Max. Max nodded.
Jack sat back, looking at the trio. “I'm guessing who two of the volunteers are.”
“We'll need more than us of course, Dad. That's why we've been on the hunt for others,” Zack explained. “Once the eggheads got the process to work on Max and me,” he said with a nod to the Neodog.
“Right,” Jack drawled. “Matter, antimatter,” he said, looking from one to the other. “My question is why?”
“A surgical strike, Dad. Many of the facilities are just too well protected to be taken out from orbit no matter how big a hammer we throw. It's time to get smarter about it. What did you used to tell me all these years? Work smarter not harder?”
Jack snorted. “I stole it from Scrooge McDuck. I watched videos when I was very little and that stuck,” he said. “And I'm still waiting.”
Zack frowned then shrugged as he looked at Max. “Well, if I have to spell it out to you ….”
Chapter 49
Isaac looked at the new weapon in his logistics pipeline and shook his head. “He can't be serious!”
“Oh, but he is,” Commander Mizu answered, completely deadpan. He'd actually been looking forward to the deployment of this particular weapon. In his opinion he thought it was well past time to do so.
“But … antimatter? Is he insane?”
“By he, you mean Jack Lagroose?” Commander Mizu asked. The general nodded. “Well, sir, you know the man better than I do. But this didn't come from him.”
“Oh?”
“No, sir. He signed off on it obviously; it's from his stockpiles I believe. But General Roman signed off on it as well. But the originator of the idea came from several sources. The one that apparently got them moving on it was Major Zack Lagroose, sir.”
“Zack … I've been wondering where he's been hiding.”
“He's … I'm not sure, sir. I do know he's supposed to be on Earth now.”
“On Earth?”
“Yes, sir. He's in the recon teams, a new breed of them,” the Commander stated.
Isaac frowned. He couldn't be held accountable for every soldier who passed through Olympus; that was obvious. He just wished someone would have clued him in earlier.
“Get Roman on the horn. I need to know what the devil they are planning.”
“Yes, sir. The antimatter we have coming was in the pipeline before the saturation bombardment but got continuously delayed. Apparently just moving it is tricky. They had to invent a couple new methods of doing so.”
Isaac thought that over and then grimaced at the implications. The idea of having antimatter anywhere near Olympus or the Lagrange logistics dumps didn't help with his planned sleeping habits for the next century or more. “Get me someone who knows what is going on. Now,” he ordered, stabbing his index finger into the table hard enough to lift himself out of his chair.
The commander instantly nodded.
<>V<>
Puck felt that life was returning to some semblance of normal. Not that he had any intentions of messing with the organics anytime soon. He knew they were not in a forgiving mood and any of his pranks, however minor, could and probably would spell his doom.
So he remained on his best behavior as he surfed the growing South American net. He didn't just surf it though; he actively protected it against Skynet. That was his small contribution to the war effort.
He had been surprised that the humans he'd protected in Brazil as well as Athena of all people had provided character witnesses in his defense. He didn't want to let them down; Athena's solemn warning that this was his last chance had been almost terrifying to witness.
“Oh? What's this?” He followed a tendril of Skynet as it attempted to access his network. It was a simple matter of blocking the tendril, but he was curious about the source. No one had said he was banned from messing with Skynet after all, quite the contrary he calculated.
He missed Loki sometimes. That mischief making A.I. would have loved this situation. He had been a master of playing one side against the other; this war would have been a fertile ground for him in some ways. Loki had either been off world and deleted or had been on the planet and had been caught and suborned by the virus. There was no way he would have laid low this long. Loki was capable of playing the long game, but the spacers would have found him by now.
If Puck had learned anything, it was that the organics and A.I. had little use for humor now. They were oh so serious trying to survive, and if he wanted to survive he'd have to play along, which meant he had to narrow down the source of the intrusion and alert the humans.
It could be a mobile source, but he doubted it. It was coming from a land line along the Argentinean coast. A check of the area yielded little results until he accessed the small cloned map library that had been installed in the net. A search of the area immediately got a hit, a university outpost. When he checked the university and why the outpost existed, he got more than he bargained for in an answer.
Instantly he put a call through to Athena while he tried to turn his Aphrodite emotional modulator down from gibbering panic to something manageable. The implications were unthinkable. He had to get off the planet, had to now.
“Athena, damn it! Open a channel!” he raged, pinging her clone until it became aware.
“What now?” the clone asked simply.
“I need the real deal,” Puck said.
“She's busy,” the clone replied, immediately retreating. “I don't have time for your shenanigans, Puck,” she stated.
“Wait!” Puck said, lunging. “You need to open a channel. A laser line with enough bandwidth to get me off. Now!” he said, emotional emulator getting out of control again.
“What now?”
“It's …,” Puck flicked the data to the clone. “It's that!” he said, pointing at the data file.
The clone picked up the file, stuffed it into a buffer, and then pulled it apart. He could see it; he hated the lack of trust. Also the time the clone was taking. “Are you certain?”
“Yes! Yes, yes!” he answered, desperate.
“Nanite weapons. If you are correct, Skynet is, has been working on nanite weapons of its own.”
“Yes!” He pulled up a list of college professors, courses, and grad students from the archives. “See? See? Now let me out of here!”
Athena stopped him as he tried to move in on the clone. The clone had triggered her awareness; she took over. “Don't fool around with me, Puck; we don't have the time,” she said as he realized he was talking to her for real. “I need everything you've got. Now.”
<>V<>
Once she had the report, Athena retreated. She sent orders to her clones to gather additional data as she called a priority one meeting of the military and government.
Jack and General Murtough were both at the congressional hall testifying. She was called in with gratifying speed to report to the General Murtough and government. The president wasn't on hand. She'd gone to Mars, but Senator Brakin was there.
Jack had been on hand to discuss the antimatter situation in an investigation committee. From the moment he had walked through the door, he had known he was being called on the carpet about it. It wasn't fair; it wasn't his plan. He'd just signed off on it. But life wasn't fair. In some ways Athena's interruption was a godsend. At least until he and the others were briefed on the horrors about to be unl
eashed on the planet below.
“Nanites? Are you …,” he shook his head. “Of course you are. Narrow down the locations. Do that now. Everywhere on the planet, Athena. Spread a wide net. We'll filter later,” he said looking to the general. Isaac nodded.
“How?” Athena asked as she set her bots and clones to work on the problem.
“Start with who was doing research and who had been tinkering with it in the past.”
Athena's holographic avatar nodded. “Okay, we have those on file. So eliminate everyone who wasn't? That narrows the list slightly, Jack but …”
“Universities, research facilities, governments, illicit weapon designers, hell, even medical firms.”
“Nanotech research was banned on Earth,” Senator Brakin pointed out. “The UN was pretty thorough about rooting out weaponized nanotech. Everyone on the planet agreed it had to be stopped. Well, almost everyone.”
“The actual construction yes. And definitely the implementation of nanotech, though it's been violated many times,” Athena replied. She refrained from pointing out Gia's gaff for the moment, though it was difficult. “But theoretical research at universities has been ongoing for centuries. Many a grad student cut his teeth on creating a new design and then used it as their thesis project in order to garner funding or corporate interest,” she said. The senator grimaced and nodded. “I'm adding the journals to the list. We're going to need an intel team to sift through everything.”
“Understood,” General Murtough said. “Are we certain this isn't a deception plan though? False intelligence in order to get us to jump?”
“It could be,” Senator Brakin said slowly, almost hopefully. “Given the source,” he eyed Athena.
“I don't like or trust Puck. But everyone in this room should have been aware of the threat, especially after Chernobyl.”
Isaac's breath went in with an indrawn hiss of discontent. “She's right. How could we have missed it? And for so long?”