by Ira Tabankin
Gorbachev nodded, “In the past three days you’ve shown me more than I ever considered. I never knew we weren’t alone. I always dreamed of being in space. Your technology is like magic. I assume you’ve had a hand in some of the changes in our leadership, is that correct?”
Kalteck nodded and replied, “Of course I did. I also had a hand in changes in America. I accepted the mission to prepare you for what’s coming, and I will. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to make you ready because if I fail, if you fail, then my people will never be able to return home.”
“I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Of course, you do. You can accept my assistance, or you can continue on your country’s current path and have a very short reign as Chairman.”
“I understand. I’ll accept your offer and begin the process of changing the policies of my country. I’ll reach out to contact President Reagan. Should I assume he is waiting for my call?”
“Yes. I’ve given him the same tour as I gave you. He is eager for your call and is willing to reach what he called world-changing treaties with you.”
“I think I should thank you.”
Everett had conflicting feelings about the changes Kalteck was maneuvering in the USSR and America. He asked Kalteck how far he intended to go with the national changes. “As far as I have to. My mission is to do whatever I have to ensure your planet can defend itself when the enemy fleet arrives, and believe me, they are coming. You may think I’m a murderer, but I have no choice but to do everything I can to make you ready, and while you made a lot of progress, you’ve still got a long way to go. Are you able to continue working with me?”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought. I am conflicted. Part of me is disgusted by what you’ve done, what I’ve assisted you in doing. Arrange the assassination of a President, leaders of the Soviet Union, other world leaders, creating wars, all of the useless deaths and suffering we’ve created. I have to be honest with you, part of me hurts, and yet the other part of me is pleased with the progress we’re making. I look back at everything we’ve accomplished since you arrived amazes me.”
“I understand, and my question remains, do you want to retire?”
“If I said yes, would you activate the nanites you placed inside me to end my life, or do I just die in my sleep, or maybe you’ll arrange a plane crash with me in it, all so I couldn’t talk about your secrets?”
“My friend and I mean it. I consider you, my friend. I gave you my word I won’t kill you, nor will I instruct your nanites to kill you. I would program them to ensure you can’t speak about us, and you know how they work. If you ever began to speak about me, they’ll stop you.”
“I know how they work. I’ve seen them working on others. I know how you use them to control humans to get the results you want. I’ll give you my answer, I’m not going to retire. I want to continue working with you. We’ve come so far. I want to see the end result if I live long enough to see the war.”
“The nanites I placed inside of you can ensure you live, unless you end up in a crash that destroys your body or brain so badly, they can’t repair the damage.”
“And Liane?”
“Sadly, we’ve discussed this already. I gave her a gift. She’s never gotten ill when others did. She never suffered any of the common Earth diseases, but I can’t allow her to live as long as you. As we’ve discussed, you will soon have to disappear from the public because you look and are young while your chronological age is approaching 66.”
“When will I have to disappear?”
Kalteck looked down, “Soon, in a few years, after Liane passes…”
Everett looked at Kalteck, “How long, how long does she have?”
“Do you want to know? Are you sure you want to know when?”
“No, I don’t want to know. Will it be painless?”
“I promise you, she won’t feel a thing. It will happen when she’s sleeping. One moment she’ll be dreaming and then her heart will stop, and she’ll pass. It will happen in an instant. The nanites will ensure she feels nothing.”
“I don’t want to live without her, she’s the love of my life. I can’t think about going on without her. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“I can do one thing I haven’t discussed with you because of the potential side effects. I can program the nanites to lessen your memory of her…”
“NO! If she has to pass to heaven, I want to keep my memories of her.”
“Okay, I’ll follow your lead. If you change your mind, let me know.”
Everett slowly and quietly asked, “When will she pass?”
“My friend, I’m sorry to say one of her heart valves is weakening. The time is coming when the valve will fail, and then she’ll have a heart attack…”
“How do you know this? Damn it the nanites, right? You can communicate with them.”
“I don’t, my AI does. Everett, I’m sorry for your soon to be loss.”
Chapter 17
In January 1986, Kalteck’s AI informed him, “There is a stealth ship in Earth’s orbit.”
“Whose?”
“From the system G-12Beta. I have attempted to communicate with their AI with no result. The ship ignores all of my requests. It is in its fifteenth orbit. We have never encountered this race before.”
“Where does its orbit take it over? Show me on the monitor wall.”
Kalteck reviewed the ship’s orbit, “Damn it! How quickly can you get us to Earth?”
“Kalteck, even at the risk of burning our drive out, it will take us four hours. I can’t risk a short jump this close to both the gravity wells of Mars and Earth. What concerns you so much?”
“The ship’s orbit carries it over the American state of Florida, and the Americans are going to launch one of their shuttles today. I worry about that ship. I wonder if she means to grab their shuttle or damage it when it lifts off or when it enters orbit. Get us back to Earth as quickly as possible, but do not burn out the drives.”
At 81.5 seconds after launch from the Kennedy Space Center the stealth ship hovered over the shuttle’s launchpad. It confirmed the location of its target by taking star scans. At 81.6 seconds into the launch of the Challenger the alien stealth ship fired a millimeter thin beam which struck the Challenger’s main fuel tank. The beam wasn’t strong enough to burn through the tank or to destroy the shuttle. The invisible beam was just strong enough to cut off a suitcase-sized piece of foam broke from the external tank. The block of foam struck the Challenger’s left wing and left booster at the point where the ‘O” rings connected the booster’s segments. The strike opened a six-to-ten-inch-diameter hole, allowing hot gases from the strap on boosters, which were leaking from the booster to enter the wing. At the time of the explosion, the Challenger was at an altitude of 65,600 feet. The explosion caused the boosters to break apart from the shuttle’s main fuel tank. The shuttle dropped into the ocean while the two boosters crisscrossed the sky above the launch pad. The crew died when they hit the water. The loss of the Challenger set back America’s space program for years.
The stealth ship was surprised when Kalteck’s ship, which it hadn’t seen coming, fired a thin beam that burnt through the strange ship’s shields. Kalteck’s AI told him, “They were ordered to stop all of Earth’s manned space flights.”
“Now that you’ve got them talking, who sent them?”
“They said the Emperor’s military commander from the southern area of the fourth planet of this system. Their orders were to destroy this planet’s ability to prepare for space war. What are your instructions?”
“Now that you’ve broken through their firewalls, I want you to download everything in their AI and then destroy their ship. Then send the record of this to our closest relay station.”
“Yes, sir.”
The people of earth were told the unusual cold of the launch morning caused ice to form, on the main fuel tank. The falling ice knocked off the foam. It was an accident, but noth
ing more than an accident. The loss of the Challenger delayed America’s manned space flights for over a year. It also cost a lot of public support for the space program, which caused Kalteck and Everett a lot of stress. They shifted the majority of their support to the Russian space program. Kalteck secretly assisted their plans for the Mir space station. With the loss of the American Skylab, the Mir would be Earth’s space station, which Kalteck hoped could be used to assemble ships in orbit and begin building space weapons. He was saddened when he realized the Earthlings didn’t have the skills to build ships in orbit, nor did they have the manufacturing ability to build space weapons.
Kalteck told Everett they had to speed up Earth’s manufacturing and technology quicker than previously planned. His list of new projects included stealth fighters and bombers, unmanned attack planes, rail guns, and improving Earth’s crude lasers. Everett sadly reminded his alien friend that many of Earth’s people were leery of moving weapons into space and thus expanding the superpower competition into what they considered peaceful outer space.
Kalteck said he wasn’t sure Earth was going to make it in the time they had left. Everett sadly nodded his agreement. He said, “We have an election in a couple of years, maybe our new President will be able to expand on President Reagan’s military buildup. I’m not losing hope. Our people are fighters when our back is against the wall.”
“My young friend, that’s the problem, by the time your people know their backs are against the wall, it will be too late for you to do anything. I don’t like the way that ship slipped past my sensors and destroyed the shuttle. I am going to run another scan of your system to see if there are any more of their ships or bases, I may have missed in my former scans.”
“How could you have missed them?”
“Your system is a large one with nine planets, the remains of our mining planetoid, various comets, and you can’t imagine the amount of space junk floating through your system. I have a single ship that wasn’t designed to run detailed intelligence missions. I already knew your people were here and the level of your intelligence levels, so my ship was outfitted with more weapons in case the enemy showed up earlier than we projected. Since my ship is small, there was only so much equipment that could be jammed into it. As you’ve seen, the outside of my ship is covered in additional point defense and shield and stealth generators since with each upgrade, the nanites squeeze more of them into every spare space.”
“I wouldn’t consider your ship cramped…”
Kalteck laughed, you should see our battlestars. They are the size of a small moon, their crew is in the thousands, and they even carry six squads of fighters and four squads of bombers.”
“Bombers? In space?”
“Yes, they launch very large anti-ship missiles…”
“I thought you said missiles weren’t very good for space fighting…”
“You remember well. These aren’t your normal missiles as you think of them. They have their own AIs. They are very new, I only learned of them in my last update from home. Their drives can generate small wormholes allowing them to jump through space at FTL speeds and reappear in normal space close though to their targets that they can’t react. Their warheads are huge antimatter bombs. A single one could destroy half of one of your states. The purpose of the bombers is to jump into a wormhole where they can’t be located and then launch their missiles, or to launch them so their drives can jump to reappear at their targets and can’t be defended against.”
“A weapon which can’t be defended against?”
“Our battlestars generate a massive electromagnetic shield which the missiles run into, thus causing them to explode prematurely. The problem is the energy to generate the shield and also absorb the energy released by the antimatter explosion requires more energy than your planet generates.”
Everett sat motionless with a pale face, “A single one of your battlestars creates more energy than the entire Earth?”
“Yes, your planet doesn’t generate very much energy. You only think it does.”
“No wonder you people were able to destroy your planet.”
“The energies released during our war would be off any scale you use to measure energy. A single of our large antimatter weapons exceeded all the energy you release.”
“It's so hard to think of such energy.”
“I will return before your probe arrives at your second planet.”
“Be safe out there. We need you.”
“If something happens to me, I’m leaving you a small box that will help get you prepared.”
Kalteck handed Everett a black box the size of three large paperback books stacked on top of each other. “What is it? It looks like a matte black box.”
Laughing, Kalteck nodded, “It’s called a teaching box. I discovered it in the Shrine. I thought it would help you. All you have to do is ask it something, and it will give you the answer.”
“I don’t see any way to turn it on…”
Laughing his deep wall-shaking laugh, Kalteck responded, “Its voice-activated, I’ve programmed it to respond to your or my voice. Watch.”
“Teacher box, this is Kalteck, what is the cube root of 1,755?”
“Such a simple question, the answer is 12.0622.”
“What is the velocity to escape the gravity well of Earth?”
“You are boring me/ The answer is 36,700 American feet per second. I responded with the American measurement because you are in the state of Nevada, a member of the United States of America. If you were outside of America, I would have said the escape velocity would be expressed as 11,186Km per second.”
“Who am I with at this moment?”
“United States Air Force Lieutenant General, with the rank symbol of three stars, Everett Yahnig, and myself. I am programmed to respond to you and to the General.”
Everett said, “You can address me as Everett.”
“Thank you, General Everett.”
“No, you don’t have to address me by my rank unless I tell you so. Otherwise, you can address me by my first name, Everett.”
“Instruction has been accepted, hello Everett. How may I be of assistance? Would you like to begin your education? I am a certified teaching box. I was designed to educate the young of Kalteck’s people through their adult lives. You are the first human I have met. Kalteck has allowed me to download your history from his ship’s AI, so I am prepared to properly educate you.”
“I’m not a young one, I am a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General, I’m 67 years old.”
“You may be normal or even intelligent for an earthling. However, based on the scale of Kalteck’s people, you would be measured as a very young Martian. Maybe one entering their first year of formal education.”
“Wow, that hurt.”
“Where are you in pain? I am also trained in providing medical assistance, I can generate medical nanites if the injury requires them. Where does the pain radiate form?”
“It is okay, it is a figment of speech.”
“There is much I have to learn about working with you humans. Now that I’ve been activated and I’ve connected to your very crude communications and broadcast systems, I’ll be able to learn everything about you that wasn’t in Kalteck’s AI. Kalteck, these people have no national comms net for the instant exchange of information. Nor do they have implants, what a backwater system you’ve brought me to.”
“I know it’s funny isn’t it, that we’re going to use these people to stop our old enemy.”
“Is the General a prime example of the humans? Should I model my programs from his responses?”
“He is extraordinary. In case you haven’t already noticed…”
“He has nanites in his system. I have downloaded his service record, including the classified sections, you choose well. What are my instructions?”
“I want you to educate Everett. Train him as you would one of us. I need him to carry on in case something happens to me. Increase his knowledge in eve
rything he will need to know to educate his people about us and how to fight the Emperor’s people without destroying his world.”
Everett broke into the discussion, “Nothing is going to happen to you. I know you, you’re careful. You have to be careful out there. We, your people need you.”