The Tau Ceti Agenda

by Travis S. Taylor

  Elle sat the photo back on her desk at the southwest window, which was slightly open. Scotty casually strolled toward her with a blank stare on his face. Elle was pretty certain from the look that he was reading something DTM. She didn't interrupt but instead watched him as he stood in thought for a few more seconds.

  "General, thanks for seeing me," Scotty said as the stare melted to a smile. The two had known each other for decades. They had died together and had also been resurrected together. They had planned the Exodus and the movements of historical events in at least three star systems together, and there was more to come. Much more to come.

  "We're alone, Scotty," she said. "Well, other than Socks over there." Elle nodded to the kitty at the foot of her bed.

  "Meow," the artificial intelligence kitty replied.

  "Aww, Socks. Now come here, kitty," Elle called to her AIK. The artificial cat jumped up from its comfy bed and ran across the hardwood floor with a pitter-pat of tabby feet and then nuzzled up to Elle's shins and purred. Unless the AIK was analyzed with quantum- membrane technology sensors or it was torn apart and examined, it was indiscernible from a real orange tabby cat. Elle picked up the AIK and gently stroked the robotic pet's fur. It continued to purr softly, which soothed Elle's nerves. She relaxed in her desk chair and continued to scratch behind the cat's ears.

  "Oh, well then, if we are alone, it is good to see you, Madam President," Scotty said earnestly.

  "Oh, knock that shit off will you, Scotty?" Elle said with a dismissing wave of her hand. "What can I do for you at such a late hour?"

  What time is it anyway, Copernicus?

  1:36 AM, ma'am.

  "Well, Elle, I've been running some more simulations of the election, and I think today could be too early to make the assassination attempt. It won't impact the large group of voters at Luna City anyway, and that is where this election is going to be lost or won. The values we used for the GROWTH-star and the WAR-sub-t coefficients seem to be low when you consider the economic fuel that Moore has created in his military buildup. And the DURATION-sub-t and the a7 coefficients just seem to me to be pulled out of thin goddamned air. If you ask me—"

  "Scotty." Ahmi held up her hand to stop the former chief justice. Scotty paused midsentence. "Listen, Copernicus and I have hashed through the dynamic models of the general elections and economics and behavior of the Sol System over and over, and every simulation we have run curve-fits to those values. Granted, Luna City could prove to be a problem in this election, but we'll just have to overcome that with the press. You've been in on the sims from the beginning. You know good and damned well that we've even used the weather- control data, sunspot activity, and literally more than a million other factors in this model. It is probably the most complicated scientific model of human culture ever generated. If we weren't using it to overthrow a government or two, we'd probably get a Nobel Prize for it. Granted, there are a lot of moving parts, but the model is good. So don't go getting cold feet on me now."

  "I realize all the work we've put into the model, Elle, but it still almost seems like magic rather than mathematics." Scotty rubbed the one o'clock shadow growing on his chin and then threw his hands up. "I'm not going to get you to change your mind on this, am I? Something could happen at the last minute on Tuesday morning that could shift the election. Whether we want that damned bullheaded Mississippi redneck marine in office or the Ivy League brat, we might not be able to alter the outcome of the election if we impact events too early or too late."

  "Sorry, the plan is already in place, and it is too late to stop it. And we sure as hell don't need to go monkeying around with things at the last minute without having simmed the outcome. Now, is that all you had on your mind?" Elle leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on her desk. Her skirt slid to knee level, revealing her athletic legs and the fact that she wasn't wearing hose—they were curled up on the floor next to her boots and had been there for hours. Elle stretched her arms wide over her long black ponytail with a yawn. "It's getting late."

  "I'm not certain what else to say about it then. I guess you have been right, pretty much, for about fifty years now. Or you've been really goddamned lucky," Scotty joked. "You know, you should try to take a break, Elle. You look tired."

  "I've been tired for about forty years, Scotty. Knowing that I'm gonna burn in Hell for all eternity will do that to a person." She added the last comment as an old joke the two of them had shared for years. When they first had the plan of developing a Separatist organization, Scotty had warned her of the potential carnage that could result. Ahmi—President Madira at the time—had assured her chief justice that burning in Hell to create a truly functional world for all people was worth it. Scotty had commented to her that she almost sounded nuts. President Madira laughed and again explained that that would be another good reason for burning.

  Elle raised her left eyebrow to her old friend in an invitingly flirtatious way. "But we're all gonna burn for something. Besides, I'm thinking about taking a break, though I could think of better things to do than sleep."

  "Why, Madam President, whatever would you have in mind?" Scotty closed the distance to her slowly, yet deliberately, and took Elle's hand, helping her to her feet. Elle stepped towrd him as Scotty wrapped his arms around her. Lost in the moment, a flurry of action between them and toward the bedroom side of the penthouse ensued. Scotty slid his hand down the small of Elle's back to her firm buttocks and then grasped them solidly as he kissed her. In return, Elle tightened the muscles there with a slight quiver of her thighs and pulled Scotty tightly into her lips. After exploring his mouth vigorously with her tongue, she pushed him back with both hands, planting them on his chest—her fingertips massaging into his pectoral muscles. She then slid them down his stomach to his waist, fingering at his waistband. Elle continued to push him backward until they both nearly tripped as they stepped on the AIK's tail.

  "Meeoow!" Socks wailed as he made like a rocket across the room to hide underneath the desk.

  "Oh, shit, sorry kitty," Elle managed to say, muffled between kisses and fumbling with Scotty's belt buckle. She backed him up against the Martian oak bed and pushed him backward onto it while at the same time untying her ponytail. Scotty rose up and pulled the fasteners loose on her blouse and then slid it over her milky white Martian shoulders to the floor. The leader of the Separatist Army and Nation stood topless in front of her most trusted male companion and eyed him like a tiger about to devour its prey. The two of them had decided years before that they were going to get lonely at the top unless they added some extracurricular activities to their friendship. Sex had turned out to be the best one they could think of.

  With a swish of her head, left-to-right, her long black hair fell softly over her naked shoulders, hanging just over her firm breasts, her erect nipples peeking out between strands of her glistening hair. Scotty grasped both breastly gently but firmly in his hands and eyed her hungrily.

  Dim the lights, Copernicus, she thought. Her AIC dimmed the room lights and left the windows and dome transparent. He didn't reply, as he surely would regret interrupting unless he had to. Yeah, that's good.

  Elle grabbed Scotty's dress shirt and ripped it apart and then pushed him backward again. He lost his balance and plunged down onto the bed. This time she crawled on top of him, fondling his chest and biting at his neck and torso. She paused and looked into his eyes and then bit his lower lip, tugging it just hard enough to stimulate and not leave a mark. Her tongue again searched into his mouth eagerly, as eagerly as a teenager kissing for the first time. Scotty's tongue returned the exploration genuinely. Their most recent rejuves had left both of them with very early twenty-something bodies, and they definitely reacted that way sexually—a well documented side effect of the rejuve process.

  Elle shivered with chill bumps and writhed ecstatically to the feel of Scotty's hand squeezing her left breast. She leaned her head back, shaking the hair out of his way, and again he grasped her firmly with
both hands, a hand to each breast. Her enthusiasm only increased, like pouring pure rum on a red hot flame, as Scotty tugged eagerly at her aroused nipples. She raised and jostled her hair over her face again before she slithered off the bed and back to his belt. The zipper and snaps went easily aside and she knelt to the floor in order to slide his trousers and underwear off, dragging her long, free hair across his naked crotch and legs, teasing him with the tickling sensation.

  Somehow in the passionate throes, Scotty had already managed to kick off his shoes and was toeing at his socks frantically. Elle helped him finish removing them with a gentle caress of his toes and then a slight nibble at his left foot. She eased upward, kissing and nibbling at his legs, with her hands exploring his body as she rose. She kneaded his thigh muscles as she kissed his calf, and then she kissed his thighs.

  Elle grasped Scotty's penis gently at first between her right thumb and forefinger and fondled it carefully before her. Then she firmly and more aggressively gripped it with her entire hand, while unzipping her skirt the rest of the way with her left hand. All gentleness finally thrown aside, she took him into her mouth with the same unwavering concentration that she would any task or battle plan. Goose bumps rushed in a wave over her skin as her skirt hit the floor. With a rhythmic motion, Elle worked over Scotty for a few moments longer. The motion of each of her down strokes was emphasized with his blissful moans. The pale violet hues of the gas planet filled the room, casting strange flickering shadows of their undulating motion across the hardwood floor. The strangeness of the lighting and shadows added a sharp edge to the mood and titillated their visual sense.

  The taste of him in her mouth and the feel of his strong hands running through her hair and down her back fueled her desire for Scotty to the boiling point. Elle looked up and caught his eye and kissed her way up his stomach, stopping to bite his right nipple. Scotty flinched slightly at the bite but didn't protest. His flinch triggered Elle to bite him again and again in soft, slow, nibbles across his chest and up the side of his neck. She bit into him and lingered there, feeling his pulse rush through his carotid artery with her tongue before she continued up to his mouth. Elle tugged with his lower lip between her teeth and then playfully kissed him.

  Finally, she wriggled like a cat on top of him and pushed him into her. Elle exhaled with each rhythmic thrust and rocked her hips forward then back. Her body and his bounced against the mattress of the old bed, producing a faint squeaking of the Martian oak posts against the floor. Then and there, that moment, the few rare moments like that that Elle and Scotty had managed over the past few decades, those moments were the most real to each of them and the moments where they felt truly alive. The two would-be, most-wanted terrorists in the known galaxy forgot all about plans to destroy America and revolutions and wars for a fleeting, frolicking moment. They weren't in love, but it was the closest thing either of them could manage under the circumstances.

  Elle moaned softly as her breathing quickened and her back tensed. The faint squeaking of the bedposts against the floor grew louder and faster, and the strange lighting from the Jovian, now nearly half-risen, caused their motion to be overemphasized from shadows dancing hysterically across the room. She could sense that Scotty was getting close to climax as well.

  "That's it, Scotty," she sighed. And then she sighed again as her toes curled into the comforter of her bed and she gripped Scotty harder and bit down on his left earlobe.

  Ma'am, I've got an urgent alert from the spaceport at Madira Valley Beach, her AIC interrupted just as Scotty let go. His body shook, and he exhaled forcefully three times. With each exhale, he dug his fingernails down Elle's back, leaving light pink scratches in her pale epidermis. Then he relaxed his neck muscles and let his head fall back onto the bed, followed by a final grunt of ecstasy. Elle's DTM virtual sphere kicked alive with alerts and other distracting data.

  "Unhh," she moaned and shivered a final time, and then as if someone had thrown a switch, immediately snapped out of the mood and into Elle Ahmi, Separatist Leader mode. It was as if someone had screamed "Incoming!" and she had jerked to scrambling for cover and her weapon. Nobody'd better be fucking with my plans!

  "Elle . . ."

  "Goddamnit!" she cursed, startling Scotty out of the moment and completely destroying the mood for each of them. There was work to be done, but Elle didn't have to like it. Turn the damn lights on. Fuck.

  "What the . . . Elle?" Scotty looked at her, bewildered and squinting from the light in his eyes.

  "What kind of alert?" she said verbally.

  There has been a security incident, and several soldiers and guards have been killed, the AIC reported.

  What do you mean security incident?

  Vital information to the battle plans has been downloaded: some background information on you, the Oort Cloud facility, and knowledge of the QMT-4 prototype, the AIC replied.

  "Shit!" As if the encounter had never happened, Elle was in General Ahmi mode and was standing at her bedside, pulling her uniform out of a drawer near her bed and getting dressed. "Who, and how, Copernicus? Go speakers for Scotty."

  "Yes, ma'am," the AIC's voice filled the room. "There may be more data that she copied, but nobody is certain of that yet. Also, there is no identification on her, but it appears to be a young red-haired woman of average build. My guess is that her physical appearance is under disguise if this is a professional attempt. Somehow the security cameras were overridden, and there is no image of her available. She managed to infiltrate a battle cruiser and hack into the secure network. All of this does suggest a pro. CIA perhaps?"

  "Too early to guess. Damn. All right, find her. Alive! We need to know what she knows." Elle looked at Scotty, who was still lying naked and spent on her bed with a tired and very angry expression. Her sleep cycle would have to wait. "It's always something.

  "We have to go, Scotty," Elle said as she stormed to the edge of the penthouse toward the door and donned the forever-present red, white, and blue ski mask. She pulled her long black hair into a ponytail through the hole in the back of the mask and slapped the door open, never bothering to look back at her lover. "Copernicus, have my Lorda troop lifter ready. Come on, Scotty."

  Chapter 6

  October 31, 2388 AD

  Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)

  Madira Valley Beach Spaceport

  Saturday, 5:40 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  Saturday, 1:40 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time

  Any luck, Allison? Kira thought to her AIC. After the altercation in the stockroom, she had been having a hard time avoiding interaction with the Seppy battle cruiser's security detachments. The entire ship knew that she was there now, and she had been lying low for the better part of half an hour, trying to come up with a new escape plan. She had heard several announcements over the ship's 1MC intercom for all hands to watch for the intruder. And that wasn't good.

  No. The structural integrity fields of the ship's outer hull have all been activated, and I haven't been able to find a way through them yet. Kira knew that Allison was a smart AIC and had trained all her life—ever since her AI family had activated her—to hack codes. It was fun to her, which was part of why she had followed the path to becoming an AIC for an intelligence operative. It was just a matter of time before she would figure a way out of the ship's structural integrity fields (SIFs).

  Well, the longer we stay, the less chance we have for getting the hell out of here, Kira urged her. Can we blow a SIF generator somewhere?

  I've looked at that, Allison responded. The generators are really deep in the ship. And I'd suspect that is the one direction we should avoid since I'm certain the Seppies have thought of that approach too.

  Shit. We can't just wait around. Sooner or later, somebody is gonna find us.

  I understand, Allison replied. The two of them had been together a long time, and there was no real need for Kira to tell her such obvious things—of course they couldn't just keep waiting around, an
d Allison understood that. The AIC had always found it interesting how humans had a habit of trying to add stress to a situation with hopes of making it better. It neither helped nor hindered the AI. It was more data, however. And Kira liked to nudge her AI partner-in-crime a little every now and then just to keep her motivated.

  What if I steal a ship and blast out? Kira squirmed a bit against the coolant pipe that she had been becoming one with for about the past thirty-five minutes. She had gotten used to the periodic yellow flash of the warning lights flickering off the dull gray interior walls of the battle cruiser.

  She had almost grown comfortable on her perch. There had been several close calls when troops had hurriedly marched underneath her down the hallway to the hatch at the aft end of the hangar. The hangar had been her original plan, but now she wasn't sure that it was really much of a plan more than just a general idea or a natural instinct to run for the door. All would have worked fine had she not slipped up and let that damned stock clerk sneak up behind her the way she did. After more than four years of working undercover as a second wife in a rich household, Kira was afraid that she was getting soft and sloppy. The immunobooster she had given herself as soon as she had the opportunity to hide and recover was doing its job. The injection had almost completely healed the railgun wound in her arm. The adrenaline and pain meds in it had also reduced the throbbing to a point that she didn't remember the wound being there—well, at least she no longer paid attention to it.

  Maybe. Let me run some numbers real quick, Allison replied.

  Well, do it quick. I'm getting tired of just sitting around. Kira was skeptical that just a shuttle ramming the SIF-protected hull from the inside would be enough to get out. On the other hand, the SIFs were designed to protect ships from external threats, not internal ones.

  Do you still remember how to fly mecha? Allison asked.

  Man, I was hoping you weren't gonna say that. It had been years since the skirmish in New Africa, where Kira had been undercover in the resistance as a mecha pilot. Years. And that mecha was way different than modern-day mecha. If push came to shove, Allison could always walk her through it, provided there would be time enough to do so.