by Mark Wandrey
The onboard computer said they’d left Tranquility traffic control. She smiled and reached over, sliding the throttle control as far forward as it would go. The digital speed indicator hovered at three hundred twenty-five kilometers per hour. “Sweet,” she said as the craft smoothly climbed past ten thousand meters. The computer suggested she level off at twelve thousand meters and reduce speed to two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour to conserve power. As a Concordian-made vehicle adapted by an alien species for use on Bellatrix, it could fly in any environment and fit through portals. The computer was more than capable of adapting and optimizing the controls to work just about anywhere. She’d felt the cabin pressurize as she passed four thousand meters and wondered if it could operate in a vacuum. She leveled off at twelve thousand meters and matched the suggested speed. There would be time to play with the car’s capabilities later.
Now in level flight, the car automatically deployed its stubby airfoils. A display informed her she was at optimum power economy. The exciting part done, she set the autopilot to tell her when they reached the vicinity of Gulf and relinquished control. The manual controls retreated into the form-fitting dash and disappeared. “Slick,” she said and reclined the seat a little. The autopilot showed she had eleven hours before reaching Gulf, so she took out her tablet and did some classwork.
An hour later she finished her studies, so she reviewed her team’s research schedules. During the beamcaster training program, Minu had realized they weren’t using the weapons to their best advantage. At one meeting, she’d brought it up to the group and found them in unanimous agreement. They needed the guns but had to change the way they were using them.
“You’re absolutely right,” Pip had said. “We’ve all been thinking the same thing.”
“Dead on,” Alijah had added. Terry had nodded, and Mandi had looked neutral, but didn’t disagree.
“See if you follow my thinking,” she’d said. “The weapon lacks many refinements you’d expect from an infantry weapon, including an integrated link for sighting, a self-contained power supply, an all-weather capability, and an economy of ammunition use.” No one had disagreed.
“We know the Concordia never seemed to worry about power consumption,” Pip had said, making light of the way most Concordian technology wasted power. “Still, with a weapon, you want to make sure a soldier has sufficient ammo for an engagement.”
“That wasn’t part of this design,” Alijah had agreed. “Even on low power, Gregg and Aaron were never able to get more than 45 cycles.”
“And low power would not be lethal to soldiers wearing the more advanced body armor we’ve seen,” she’d said. More nods. “So, the richest, most advanced of the Concordian species are using weapons that are poorly suited for what they are being used for? Why?”
No one had had an answer. They had agreed that the stocks and grips, including those used by the T’Chillen, could be customized to the weapon. The only reason there wasn’t a hominid grip was likely due to the lack of hominids in the Concordia at that time. Pip thought the beamcasters were poorly suited to the task because of the universal adaptability required by so many Concordian goods. Terry held the opinion it was because the Concordia sucked at infantry weapons. Minu wanted to agree with that, but Gregg’s idea suited her best.
“I think these are crew-served or vehicle-mounted weapons being pressed into service as infantry rifles by the T’Chillen,” he’d said. “They’re big-ass snakes, so these wouldn’t be too hard for them to handle.”
Why would they do that? They were rich, powerful, and technologically advanced, but they were using ill-suited weapons. Ted’s lecture on the decline of the Concordia drifted into her mind once again. The deeper she got into the workings of the galaxy, the more often she circled back to his outlandish hypothesis. Was it really that outlandish?
That got old quickly. “I’m on vacation,” she muttered and made the files go away.
Instead, she accessed the car’s storage looking for old Earth movies. Not surprisingly, there were none there. She took out her communicator and linked the devices. A second later she accessed the Chosen network and began browsing the movie library.
Minu loaded a dozen movies and scanned through them. She discarded a few, flagged a couple, then loaded more. There were a lot of movies with guns in them, not many of which accurately portrayed small arms warfare and tactics. She created a special file for those she thought were the best and started dropping in movies. She put Saving Private Ryan in the file and deleted Transformers. She then added The Sands of Iwo Jima and another called Full Metal Jacket. She smiled at the training sequences, until the end turned horrible. She was thankful her Chosen training hadn’t been that brutal. She deleted Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Glory. The last was interesting, but the weapons were too antiquated to be truly useful. She saved a couple of sequences on the training of snipers for possible review. Sergeant York fit that bill and was considerably more modern. We Were Soldiers proved excellent and got a star for further study, especially for the principles of airborne mobility.
Her interest piqued, she checked some of the Bellatrix network lists to see if anyone else had performed similar searches. She was surprised to find several such lists, and she used these to add more movies to her own list. She loaded The Thin Red Line, Patton, The Longest Day, and Red Dawn. Her final addition was Enemy at the Gates, recommended by Alex Jovich. She signed off the network, selected Saving Private Ryan, and settled back in the comfortable car seat.
Eleven hours was a long trip to spend watching movies. She watched Saving Private Ryan, then made some notes in her tablet. Afterwards, she slept for a few hours. When she woke, she checked her progress on the car’s monitor, then watched Enemy at the Gates. Both movies had taken place during the same period in human history, but they’d dealt with different theaters of combat. The second movie had less of the small arms combat she wanted to see, but it had an excellent plot about a society managing to hold its own despite being out-manned and technologically inferior that redeemed it. The politics were lost on her, but the story kept her mind engaged to the end. A network search revealed that the nation portrayed in the movie was the one that spawned the Rusk Tribe. “Man, what went wrong there?” she wondered.
The more she saw of infantry weapons employed in combat, the more she agreed with Gregg that their beamcasters were squad weapons. She’d downloaded a book called Jane’s Field Guild to Small Arms when she began the project a year earlier. She accessed her files on the beamcasters and began making comparisons. A short time later she gawked when she found an almost perfect match.
“United States, M-60 squad automatic rifle,” she read. It was similar in size and function, and even ammo consumption. Employed as squad support or mounted on vehicles, it chewed through ammunition at a prodigious rate. Minu relabeled the beamcaster as a squad weapon in her technical diagrams. “Now what do we do about it?” Without realizing it, Minu was beginning to form the nucleus of a military unit. She drifted off again as her car flew on into the night.
* * *
December 12th, 517 AE
City of Gulf, Desert Tribe
The buzzing autopilot woke her as the car approached Gulf. As she had been trained, Minu did a quick visual check of the instruments. The car was running with the perfection expected of Concordian engineering. A few thousand meters below the dense cloud cover, she saw the approaching coastline. She switched to manual, took the controls as they slipped from the console, and began her descent. Gulf was too remote for a traffic control system; instead, a bored woman came on in response to her hail.
“We weren’t expecting any flights,” the woman said.
“I’m not a flight. This is Chosen Minu Alma in a private aerocar on personal business, requesting approach instructions.”
“Oh, I see. Well, the city’s at thirty meters. We have twenty-kilometer winds blowing steady from the east, with occasional fifty-kilometer gusts. Visibility is less than a kilometer. Do
you need us to light the field?”
“No, your beacon is working. Any other traffic?”
“No air traffic, Chosen, you have the skies to yourself.”
“Understood, and out.” It was a reminder that most of Bellatrix was not as advanced as Tranquility. With her experienced hand, Minu guided the car down until she was only a thousand meters above the town. The craft handled wonderfully. Even though it was new to her, the controls were so intuitive it didn’t matter. She followed the beacon in, losing altitude and speed until the buildings and streets became visible as she descended out of the cloud deck. The town was only a kilometer on a side. To the east was the sea and a long line of docks where the fishing fleet that provided the city’s major export berthed. Sensing she was landing, the car automatically retracted its air foils and extended landing wheels. She spotted a long, clear street and banked toward it. The car touched down, as graceful as a bird.
She pulled up the computer map of the town and found the hotel where her Aunt was staying. Almost exactly twelve hours after the phone call, Minu parked the car in front of the hotel and stepped out. She didn’t bother locking it; the salesman had programmed the car to recognize Minu’s biometric signature. She had a key but doubted she’d ever need it. It would take a computer master like Pip to convince the vehicle to operate for anyone other than her. With a slight feeling of anxiety, she climbed the steps to the Gulf Providence Hotel and entered through the moliplas doors.
Despite the remote location and late hour, the desk clerk wasn’t surprised to see a Chosen walk in. “I’m here to see Tara Alma,” Minu said to the bored man.
“I’ll inform her you’re here.”
Minu nodded and walked over to the hotel’s nicely appointed lounge. Finding a table with two chairs, she sat down. The table was an automated server, so she ordered a soda and waited. The server delivered her drink from the central column in moments, and she took a sip just as her aunt came out of the lift. Minu raised a hand to get her attention. The woman looked just like she had the last time they’d met, over seven years earlier. She was tall and thickly built, with a somewhat round face and long black hair. She didn’t look overly thrilled to see Minu.
“I’ll give you this,” she said as she walked over to the table, “you Chosen are resourceful. What did you do, buy an aerocar?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Minu hoped she wasn’t blushing, despite the burning in her cheeks. “Have a seat. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure. What are you drinking?” Minu told her and got a reproachful look. “Whiskey and soda for me,” Tara said and sat down. The server delivered the drink, which she sipped with a sigh. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem, what’s up?”
Tara took a computer chip from her pocket and set it on the table between them. “A week ago, out of the blue, I got a letter. It was addressed to me and sent by the Chosen computer system.”
“Who sent it?”
“Nobody, just your computer.”
“That isn’t possible,” Minu insisted, “there must be a sender of some sort. Even if it was automated, someone must have initiated the process.”
Tara tapped the computer chip and held out an envelope addressed to Tara Alma in Gulf City. It was computer printed and showed no sender. The older Alma held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Regardless, here it is. This simple note was inside, along with the chip.” Minu took the note, also printed by a computer, and read it.
Tara,
I know we never got along well, and I’m sorry. You are my only family, and I must depend on you. Please give this personally to my daughter Minu. I can’t tell you what’s on it, so please don’t ask. You must give it to her by hand. She is Chosen by now, so she won’t be too difficult to contact.
Thanks,
Your brother, Chriso
Tara waited until Minu finished reading the brief note before continuing. She pointed at the chip and shook her head. “Not only couldn’t I open it, I couldn’t make a copy. I couldn’t even see the name! Computers are my thing. I designed and maintain the network here in Gulf, and I’ve never seen anything like this. You load it into a computer, and it activates an embedded bios. Try it.” Minu took the chip and slid it into her personal computer. Just as Tara said, it loaded a bios and amazingly prompted for a password. “Minu - Password?”
“Wow,” Minu said and removed the chip without trying a password. The bios deleted itself instantly, leaving no record of its presence. Who knew what would happen if she entered the wrong answer? She might only get a of couple tries. “Thanks, I guess it’s definitely meant for me.”
“Why send it to a sister you haven’t seen in years?” Tara asked. “He could have sent it directly to you instead. What the hell is going on? Why the secrets?”
“I don’t know,” Minu admitted.
“All right, I guess I can’t ask for anything more.” She finished her drink in one long swallow and got up to leave, then stopped. “You look a lot like your ancestor. Same red hair, same build. Hell, you should look at a picture of Mindy Harper someday. You could be her little sister.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Oh, one more thing. You’re the last, you know?”
“Last what?”
“The last direct descendant of Mindy Harper.”
“What? How? I thought…”
“There were others? There were. There was a second cousin; your grandfather’s brother had a girl, who had a boy. She’s dead, and the boy died last month in a fishing accident not far from here.”
“I didn’t know that. What about you?”
“I’m not blood to you. After our mother gave birth to your dad, she couldn’t have another child, so they adopted me. And of course your grandparents have been gone for years.”
“I remember. One of the only times we met was when they died in the fire.”
“Right. Well, good luck.” With nothing more to say, Tara left Minu alone at the table. There was no formal parting; she just left.
“She’s Dad’s sister, all right,” Minu snorted. It seemed like an incredibly long trip just to pick up a computer chip and the mystery that went with it. The tiny device sat heavily in her pocket as she finished her drink and contemplated the return flight. She hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours, so she checked the automated server. The menu included packaged sandwiches and snacks, so she ordered a couple of sandwiches and some chips. After they arrived, she visited the bathroom, waved to the bored desk clerk, and climbed into her car. The EPC held a seventy percent charge, so she guided the car out to the street and into the air. She had a lot of time to kill on the flight back. The computer chip was not something she wanted to tackle right then, so she continued studying how an army was supposed to work, slowly adding to her knowledge and determining what ‘her’ army would need.
* * * * *
Chapter 4
December 13th, 517 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
“Our computer system sent an untagged package to your aunt in Gulf?” Pip looked dubious.
“That’s about the size of it,” Minu said. She hadn’t returned to Tranquility since she’d already checked out; she planned to spend the rest of her leave in Steven’s Pass. It wasn’t until she’d landed on the Chosen base’s pad that she realized she didn’t know what to do with her new car. It turned out there was a parking garage with lots of cars in it. I wonder how many of these shinny aerocars the balding salesman back in Tranquility sold?
“Let me see the chip,” Pip said. They were in her office, away from prying eyes.
Minu handed over the package containing the letter and chip and watched while Pip examined it. After he read the envelope and the message, he scrutinized the envelope again. “No sender code,” he noted. She nodded. He loaded the chip into one of his ever-present tablets and watched the bios work.
“That reminds me,” Minu started and snapped her fingers, “you remember that chip
we found back in the dig on GBX2334? You ever get anything off that?”
“You know, that was a fascinating case.” He accessed programs and worked on the chip from her father while talking, doing two things at once. “These chips are awesome tech; they’re so advanced we’ve never completely figured out how they work.”
“I’ve had the lesson; they’re indestructible, hold terabytes of data, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Right, but did you know they’re a form of biological storage? They utilize a matrix of organic molecules that are incredibly dense and suspended in a semi-fluid state.” Minu shrugged. “Right, anyway, we’ve been studying them for years. I don’t know if we’ll ever figure out how to make them. There are some clues about Concordian photronic technology here.”
“You have a point?”
“Huh?”
“The chip we found on GBX2334, did you find anything?” Minu would laugh if it wasn’t so frustrating talking to a scientist. She hoped she never became that obtuse.
“Oh, right, sorry. Anyway, it’s a dead chip.”
“It looked fine.”
“Checked out fine too, initially. But when we hooked it up, nothing.”
“No data? Thought you said it was dead.”
“It was.”
“Pip…”
“Look, the chips theoretically have an unlimited lifespan. The contents are biological, though not like you or me, just aligned amino acids and nucleic chains. That chip was full of data until it self-destructed.”
“I didn’t know they could do that!”
“No one knew. They’re a very complex mechanism, simply executed, with a bio-molecular storage medium, prismatic laser read/write heads, a photronic interface, etc. The only way to destroy one is to break it or burn it. If the medium has a weakness, it’s heat. At temperatures over five hundred Celsius, it breaks down.”