“I can confirm that Stephanie is able to pull from all energy types,” she responded. “During the Gala incident, she was capable of drawing much more than she did but was not willing to risk innocent lives. Her reluctance came from her need to gain more control of the MU she used. She has advanced in leaps and bounds since then.”
Ms. E knew that secrets didn’t make friends, and she knew giving the information away could be as bad, but there was a middle ground. She wouldn’t give them details and they’d have to be happy with that. There was a line when discussions become negotiations, and when those negotiations became personal, Elizabeth shut it down.
“How did the two of you get this assignment?”
“I guess we’re lucky,” Wyld grumped, obviously displeased that he’d been shut out for the entire conversation.
Childers chuckled. “I’m not sure if you would call it luck, but we’re still here, buddy. We’re still here.”
This was true. They’d tried to ask their questions immediately after Stephanie had saved the ambassador, but Elizabeth and the team had shut them down every time. The only time the Navy had seen Stephanie, the ambassador had made sure she wasn’t alone.
She smirked. The Navy hadn’t been very impressed with that either.
Now, it was time she turned the tables on them. She had a good sense of where she was going and exactly what she wanted to know. “Exactly what were you trying to find out after that event?”
“I...uh...” Childers was thrown, and Wyld was no better.
“Well, um...”
Elizabeth suppressed a snicker and asked her next question.
“What can you tell me about eMU?”
Their answers to that were as entertaining as their answers to the first one, but she maintained the pressure. She asked question after question, none of which needed a definitive answer, but each was designed to throw them off their game.
Finally, Childers caught on to exactly what she tried to do and cut her off. “The Navy wants to determine what you and Stephanie know that the Navy should know.”
She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Not happening. I won’t share everything we know on the off-chance that you might need it. Sorry. I’ve seen the news about your leaks and I won’t entrust ONE R&D’s knowledge to you. This information is far too important and dangerous to have out in the wild.”
That stymied their conversation completely and caught the two Navy representatives off guard. When she looked back later, all Childers could think was that Elizabeth was right. The Navy leaked like a sieve.
With Elizabeth still on the line, the woman exhaled a deep sigh. “I wish we could come to an agreement. Unfortunately, we cannot provide that information to you since you aren’t cleared and we don’t have permission to do so. That means this conversation is over. I’m sorry.”
Ms. E chuckled mentally. “Yes, I believe we are at a standstill, then.”
She clicked her tongue. “And Stephanie Morgana?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Stephanie is en route to Meligorn where she will be awarded the Modfresha Garghilum.”
On their end of the line, Childers muted the call and punched Wyld in the arm, which made him flinch. “We can’t talk to Morgana because she’s off-world getting awards. See there? I was right.”
He groaned and unmuted the line. “Thank you for contacting us, Elizabeth. We’ll let you get back to your day. If there is any more information the company is able to release, please let us know. You know how to contact us.”
“That I do,” she replied and hung up quickly.
She puffed her irritation, glad to finally be rid of them. “That should give us about…two months’ breathing space.”
Her features settled into a scowl as she stood and walked over to the bookshelf. She opened an empty frame of a book and withdrew a very old bottle of scotch. Once she’d poured two finger-widths into a glass, she sipped it slowly and enjoyed the taste of the vintage liquor, even if it was still daylight outside.
“I can’t tell if my job is driving me to drink or my drinking is driving me to work. Either way, thank you to whoever left this bottle of whiskey behind. This was exactly what I needed. Now, I have about a million other things to do and I’m talking to myself.”
She stared at her reflection in the mirror and shook her head at the tired woman who peered back at her. “At least I have enough money to see a shrink and have some me-time at a private spa. Those are two very important things in a girl’s life.”
Elizabeth chuckled and wandered back to her desk where she plopped down and took to the keyboard to bring up the files she needed. There was no rest for the weary…or the wicked for that matter.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Did you know there never used to be any transition points?” Frog asked as they worked to clean the pods before they used them for another training session.
“Yup, and I’m so glad I’m not doing this way back then. The passengers had to go into stasis or cryosleep for long journeys,” Marcus answered and wiped vigorously. “All I can think of is that movie where everyone goes to sleep on the long voyage and they wake up in hell.”
Stephanie’s head jerked up from behind her pod, and she pointed at Marcus and snapped her fingers. “Yes! Todd showed me that movie. Oh, man, what is the name of it…uh…uh…”
“Event Horizon,” Lars said quietly as he emptied his pockets.
She turned toward him, her mouth open. “Wow, I didn’t know you—”
“Had the sophisticated taste of an old horror movie lover?” he asked.
“I was gonna say cared about that kind of stuff.”
He put his hands out and looked at the others. “Why does everyone think I’m such a stick in the mud? Seriously.”
Frog raised his head. “We-llll, you kinda sorta are? You know, when you’re not being extra-grumpy and all Mr. Super Serious.”
Lars opened his mouth but closed it again for a moment. “I’m not like that all the time. I can be fun,” he protested.
“Mhmm, sure you can,” Johnny soothed as if to appease him. “Like that time you cracked that joke about vegetables.”
He frowned. “What joke?”
The other man swirled his hand in the air as he finished his Pod. “You know, the one about the carrots with legs.”
The team leader seemed confused as he tried to recall what in the world Johnny was talking about. When he did, he closed his eyes and pursed his lips. “We were eight years old when I made that joke.”
Everyone chuckled. Stephanie smiled and then pouted. “Everyone, leave him alone. He is the glue of the team, the big boss man. If he wasn’t serious, you guys would wander like free-range hooligans and get into trouble without ever actually protecting anyone.”
Lars nodded. “Thank you. Jerks.”
She laughed and climbed inside the pod. “See you guys on the flip side.”
It took only a moment to settle in and she felt good about the day ahead. She needed time with her family, her team. When she opened her eyes, she was in the white room. The suggested clothing was nothing more than regular civilian or the typical jumpsuit. She decided jeans and a t-shirt would work and grew curious as to what they’d actually be doing.
The room shifted quickly and thrust her into a large vaulted room made of stone. In the center was a table with pads of paper, floating screens at each seat, and coffee.
An eyebrow raised, she started toward it and paused as Frog, Johnny, and Lars appeared, all dressed in jeans and t-shirts as well. Frog wore a shirt that read, Just a mass of cells.
“So, wait, I really need to know how this whole transition thing works,” he said as he sat at the table.
Stephanie sighed and chose the seat beside him. “In essence, we will move through or slip between dimensions. It was a huge breakthrough in travel for us. The Dreth are the ones who gave it to us.”
“No way,” he muttered in disbelief.
She nodded. “Yes, way. While their
technology was very rough and slightly behind that of Meligorn and even Earth in some ways, their travel scientists discovered something the rest of us missed. The dimensions overlap.”
He stared at her like she was out of her tiny little mind, but she continued. “Our dimension touches on others and we can slide from one point in our dimension, across the edge of another dimension, and back into ours at a different point. You only have to know where they touch.”
Frog nodded. “Oh. Okay, so move like normal, do some crazy science-fiction shit, zoom through space using the back door, and then slow down again when we reach the destination.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes and sighed. Trust him to put it like that. “Basically, yes. We can get more into it when we get back.”
He shook his head. “That’s nice of you, but I found the vintage channel and have a hot date with the vid screen.”
Slightly relieved to not have that waiting for her when she got out, she looked around the table. She counted heads and then frowned. “Where are Brenden and Marcus?”
Lars swallowed a gulp of coffee. “They stayed behind to guard the pods.”
She was confused. “Was there a threat I missed?”
He shook his head. “No, but we all thought today would be combat training. We aren’t set up like we are at the base, so if someone comes in, we’ll never know, and there’s no way I want some civilian to join us accidentally .”
“That and if you have a meltdown into Morgana energy mode, they can pull you out,” Frog pointed out.
Lars rolled his eyes. “That was put very nicely. Thanks, Frog.”
Stephanie chuckled. “I get it. There are no alarms and with me transferring experiences between worlds, it’s safer to have a backup plan. Thanks for thinking about it.”
He shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”
Frog snorted. “That and we were all terrified something would happen to you and we wouldn’t know until we finally exited the pods. They monitor your vitals but the last time, your vitals barely moved while your body started to crash.”
Stephanie poured creamer into her coffee. “Yeah, I remember that. I meant to look into it, but I haven’t had the time. I assume the energy does something to protect the most vital parts of me first but I can’t be too sure. That gives the MU a number of live characteristics and I’m not yet ready to say it has a conscious state.”
Frog shivered. “That sounds as creepy as hell. Seriously. To know you’re basically sucking in a living creature and then shooting it out your fingertips to attack.”
She giggled as Lars flipped his screen on and rolled his eyes. “We need to invest in children’s science books for this guy. Give him the basics.”
“I used to have a children’s science book that was my great-great grandfather’s,” the other man replied. “It had all kinds of things about jet engines and breaking the speed of sound. Now, people break that barrier on a regular basis in their personal vehicles—really nice flying cars but still owned by dudes with big wallets and no idea how to fly.”
This time, the AI was the hologram of a brown-haired woman who rose from the center of the table to float in front of them. “Welcome to your simulation. My name is Mindy. There will be no fighting today. Instead, you will undergo a very specific scenario that will directly assist in the future of ONE R&D. You will test the prototype for a future learning exercise for new students.”
Frog groaned. “I hate school. I am not the brightest crayon in the box.”
“There will be no need for crayons, Frog,” the AI replied.
He jerked his thumb at her and whispered to the other three, “See, I’m not the dumbest one in the group.”
“If you wish to look at the test scores of this group and compare IQ levels, we can do that,” the AI said.
Frog shook his head. “No! Good Lord, woman, continue.”
Everyone snickered as Mindy prompted a list of rules to appear on each of their screens. “Your exercise is to assume that humanity has found a new planet and that this planet will be vital to the continuation of the species. However, there is only enough power to transition one thousand tons of organic material and two thousand tons of inorganic material in one direction at a time. As a reference, you can assume that this planet is similar to Earth circa two thousand years in the past but with no humans.”
Frog stared blankly at the screen while Stephanie jotted notes on everything. “What about other living creatures or organic material? What is on this planet before we bring a single thing there?”
“Good question,” the AI replied and gestured with her hand. The room displaced around them, but they remained seated at the table. The landscape of a new world appeared. It was deep-green in some places and red in others.
When they’d had time to look around, Mindy continued. “The planet has similar flora and fauna to that found on Earth but no tool-making species. Please note that when you settle, you will not be able to receive any additional resources so you need to be careful and very selective regarding what you take. You have to get it right the first time otherwise, you will all perish on this new planet. Good luck.”
By the time she withdrew out of sight, Stephanie had already launched into a list of things they needed to think about. “So, we have precisely one thousand tons of humans we can bring if we need to. That is approximately two million pounds.”
Lars nodded and wrote the number down. “We need to figure out what the colony will need and then determine how many men and how many women to bring to the planet. Once there, we can breed and start a new population. That means bringing children there would be a moral choice versus a necessity.”
She nodded. “We need people of all walks. We need builders, lifters, creators, and those who take care of us, like doctors and such.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Unfortunately, a strong male is twice the weight of a female. A two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man, though, could be extremely important if he was built strong and muscular.”
Frog laughed. “Are you only thinking Jocks here? Because I can tell you right now, I can put at least one and a half Geeks into two hundred and twenty pounds. Plus, if we say the women are a normal weight, which is—”
Stephanie put her hand up before he could finish. “I’m gonna stop you right there. I feel a responsibility to point out that even in a hypothetical situation, I have to stick up for women when talking about weight. So, go ahead my little friend, but tread carefully unless you’d like a boot shoved up your ass.”
He put his hands up with a grin and shut his mouth. Lars tapped the end of his pen against his forehead. “We can’t think only about people as organics, though. We need to discuss the other organics we’ll need. Like meat or protein. What kind of animals would fare the best on this new planet? What about seeds? Those are organic too. And we’d struggle to do all of this without knowing what type of technology we’d need to produce energy.”
She shook her head. “One thing at a time. I know this room is filled predominantly with meat eaters, but I have to point out that we don’t need to bring animals to have protein. Look around you.”
“We’ve been told this world has flora and fauna similar to Earth’s.” She gestured toward the planet and the wildlife. We could bank on finding an edible source right here. If it means we have to eat packaged protein for the first week while we confirm what we can catch ourselves, that’s fine as long as we can have five more people instead. Animal husbandry and xenobiology is a thing, you know.”
Lars curled his lip. “I know. But the idea of colonizing a new place without having burgers and fries seems unnatural. Still, I get it. We’ll have to look at the numbers. Johnny, you need to look through the survey reports and find us a few places with animals that might be this world’s beef.”
Stephanie gave him a wink and moved on in an attempt to formulate a basic outline of what they needed. “As far as electricity is concerned, we’ll have to see what type of renewable resources are present and if
they can be optimized for this planet.”
She stopped and drummed her fingers on the desk. “You want to learn from the past here. We don’t want to simply assume that we are safe to create electricity versus determining how to use eMU or whatever variant is on that planet to meet the electrical need. I would have to test the MU on it and see where it goes and the differences in how it works, and we’d need an alternative in the meantime. There’s no real way to tell without visiting first.”
Lars nodded. “Cool. Okay, so we can say an exploration is needed. How long are the days on the planet?”
Frog scanned the data. “It looks like for every single day on Earth, there are almost two days on the new planet.”
“All right, so we would have to think about adjustment periods.” The team leader added that to his notes.
Stephanie studied her list. “Shelter. That is one of the main things. Frog, what are the weather patterns like there?”
“It looks like there are some rough storms—Earth hurricane-type storms but on a regular basis—so the shelter would have to be substantial. We’d need some kind of architectural specifics in order to keep us from dying or having to rebuild.” He threw the storm information on the screen.
“So, we would need specific tools. We could choose simpler tools but increase the man-time and power needed, knowing those tools won’t break. Or we can bring tools that will speed up creation but suffer from relatively easy breakage,” Lars pointed out.
She nodded, and he went on. “Which begs the question, how do we decide on the right types of people and skill sets to bring? I feel like there would be two different sets of people for each set of tools. Some who would have to have a higher skill set and more endurance, and others with fewer skill sets but still able to endure the long building days.”
Frog scratched his head. “This is complicated. We need a list of the different trades and then we need to figure out a baseline for the initial colony. Are we talking flushing toilets or will we share an outhouse or go in a hole in the ground? Will we bring fully functional ovens and stoves or use that weight for more important things and cook over fires? Is there clay and do we need kilns to fire it in? And we’d need someone who knew what they were doing.”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 36