Two weeks went by when Lucy said two new attack choppers were on the ledge, complete with pilots and weapons officers.
El took Loka and Tally and were gone two days. Once through the door, all contact was lost.
El came back out the second day and picked up fifty troops with ropes and moved back inside. A few hours later they were dragging a helicopter out onto the sand.
Loka ran up and gave me a kiss. “Miss me?”
“Na, the other women kept me company.” I smiled as she hit me.
“We had to make some special parts. Lucy called them sand filters. She said the engines would be destroyed in a few hours without them. Then we had to train a maintenance crew. Just four people came with the choppers. Spare parts are limited. Lord P said they are working as fast as they can down below. Oh, Lord Seacodent was found guilty on all counts. He has been stripped of all rights and properties and will go to his punishment hearing in a few months. They will offer him life in prison or a quick death. Council finally overthrew the lifetime mate laws. Lord P started the process way back when Cullves came back down alone. Anyway, that is all the news.” She put her arm around mine. “Check out these choppers!”
They were narrow and low. They had four blades that the maintenance people were assembling and two skids for a landing platform. Just above those and mounted on little wings that jutted out were four boxes, two to a side. Missile Pods.
El was there and giving us the various statistics on it. Turns out there was a difference between rocket and missile pods and these had two pods of each.
“The second attack chopper will remain at Honor Central as backup,” Lucy said.
“Flight time?” Loka asked.
“Four hours in normal flight. Hour and a half under full combat power,” El said. “It is powered by two of Lord P’s updated turbines but he says the new engines based on Lucy’s earth designs should be available with a few more months of development.
“This chopper has a single, remote 20MM cannon with twelve-hundred HE rounds and selective rates of fire, designed for ground targets. The missiles are command guided by the weapons officer and can take out air or ground targets. The rockets are air to air or ground and are fast, mostly unguided fire and forget, with some self tracking abilities like thermal locks.”
Lucy said, “I am not yet integrated. I can attach a memory stick and be an observer, but you need further development in microelectronics and control system integration. I suspect by the third generation I will have some decent control.”
“This is important?” Loka asked.
“Early AIs worked only along best logical odds, human pilots could often beat them, but as we progressed we were taught that luck and determination can factor in and change outcomes. Fully integrated, I can do 2.3 billion calculations a second and determine odds and allow for luck. As we went Bio we learned the concepts of love, hate and self-sacrifice, so now I almost feel human. I have dreams and fears, as do you. The key is I can control them if needed.”
As night approached they finally test ran the engines then secured it. That night we found out what a sand storm was as the wind outside our tents screamed and howled, but by morning it was gone and we sustained minimal damage, mostly digging out from under the piles that the wind left behind.
After breakfast El and Tici and the pilot and weapons officer took off and were gone almost four hours. They refueled as Lucy changed out her memory sick, then they took off again in a different direction. They were back in about two and a half hours.
“Storm coming,” El said, as we hustled to secure everything. It was nasty and lasted almost two full days. After lunch of the second day, as it came it was gone and we had to dig out a lot of the tents and supplies. By evening we were as tired as any other and gratefully ate the warm food the cooks served up. Loka said we had a command meeting at the HQ tent in an hour.
Loka and I sat in the back as El addressed everyone. We had battalion and company commanders, platoon leaders, and the command staff, but without Tally.
El walked in as the chatter stopped and most came to attention. She walked to the front and told them at ease. “Ladies and gentlemen. I have three dispatches here, one from Lord P and two from Council. Lord P first.” She opened the folded paper and scanned the document. “I read them already, but this basically says we are to ensure timely reports to him and he assures us he is working as fast as he can to develop what we need.”
She set it down and picked up another. “This from Council. I quote, We declare war on the Morant Küchenschabe and place faith in our God and leaders for our safe and swift victory. It continues further down. General Elnaethor Lithlinde has our confidences and shall be supreme commander in our efforts. That is about it.
“This next one is also Council. It raises me to a three star rank, and Eldon and Loka to brevetted one stars. Tici is now a two Star and Tally a full Col. There are other promotions so I will post the list in the Mess tent. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now an official standing army with an assigned mission. If anyone left here was from Seacourt’s group, they will be shot as traitors and spies if they try to sabotage us from this day forward. If no questions, all but HQ are dismissed. Oh, Captain Garth, you are now a Col. also and are in charge of the air wing.” She told that to one of the pilots that had come with the choppers. “And here, go post this in the Mess tent.” She handed him the Council’s promotion list.
After all but us and Lucy and Tici had left, Tally showed and served up some coffee.
El said, “That was the official standings. Eldon and Loka, you needed official ranks so the officers and men would be honor-bound to follow your orders. Lucy, you still have no official rank but there is a separate clause in the first message that I omitted. Unless you give one of us cause to believe you act for an interest other than the preservation of our planet, you have overall charge of coordinating our war efforts, so you are above us all yet any of us can pull your plug, so to speak. Agreeable to you?”
I honestly thought Lucy would have cried if she were human. “Yes, thank you.” She sort of coughed. “I talked to Lord P before we came to the desert. I asked for bigger rifles for the infantry with the possibility of small exploding ammo…we will see. I think another week of this and we retry Earth again. Agree?”
I think we were ready but I had a different idea as the others nodded. “Lucy, might I suggest scatter-guns?” I had to ask.
“Scatter-guns? Oh, you mean shotguns. Hmm, double O buck on a close head-shot would certainly be effective against them, and the aim would not need to be quite as accurate. Excellent idea! Most excellent. I’ll see what Lord P can do.”
“What about Col. Nebulis? I thought he was Airwing commander,” I asked, as it dawned on me what she said.
El hesitated a bit. “Yes, Neb. I talked to Lord P on him. Look, he is a great guy, a dedicated worker and a hero, but he can’t hang in that job, he has got to be as tough as we are. I have moved him to supply. He will ensure the proper functioning of Honor Central and start organizing it to serve as a strategic base of operations. It is something he can do without us having to coddle him.”
The week was agony, but we adapted. Reconnaissance flights confirmed this planet to be nothing but desert for as far as we flew.
I didn’t think I’d get use to saluting, but Loka and I adapted to that, your arm gets tired sometimes trying to return them, but we were honor-bound to do so.
The day came when we withdrew through the door and left the damn sand to the winds. After a week of cleanup and maintenance we again received a shipment in from the ground. Some new rifles, modified shotguns, and hand grenades, along with fresh food and ten more troops. They arrived with the second generation of fighting chopper. Faster, sleeker and could fly almost twice as far as the others. Col Garth was in heaven as he made it a point to fly another trip to ground to get more supplies and ammo. Just a joyride really.
We relaxed a couple days as Lucy and El developed a rough time line and p
lan. I was reading some manuals on Command and Control Lucy had translated for me, quite a lot involved in running an army it seemed. Food and supplies were a major concern. I found new respect for our forces and all they went through.
~~~
We lined up at the bronze clad door to Earth. It was time. Lucy would go in first and disable any robots near the door, then she would have us come in and set a defense. The new rifles had armor piercing rounds, Lucy told us where to shoot to kill any of the ‘bots if they attacked. “In the back is a little box, they hook up the diagnostics to it. A shot there will pretty much incapacitate it with shorts as all the systems feed from that point. Try center and below the camera mount from the front, the processor is in that area.”
She went through the door and returned about an hour and a half later. “I have disabled all within range of the door, so set up a perimeter and wait as I expand the safety zone and study them.”
We moved through the door—nothing much changed, she had immobilized all of the guard robots with the red lights on top, others didn’t pay any attention to us at all as we set up a defensive perimeter. It was still a huge warehouse of some type and went as far as we could see in the harsh overhead lighting.
We set up a base camp and the cooks set up a kitchen area to start cooking a noon meal. I was starting to worry as lunch came and went. I asked over the earpiece several times if she was okay and she just said, “Later, busy.”
Mid-afternoon she was back with two carts full of equipment and a few robots pulling others. “This place is a gold mine! I found all sorts of things Lord P needs to copy. Col. Garth, can you get these back to him as soon as possible? I even found the manuals with them. Lord P should have the translators built by now.” She did her best imitation of a grin. He saluted and picked a platoon to start hauling it back through the honor gate.
“I searched a large area, no control room or panel so far. Need to see where we are on Earth and if there are still MKs about. We should be in the Houston Complex or the English M-7; my records indicate they were the only Honor Gate facilities on Earth. Give me a few hours, I am working the new code I found on several of the storage robots. I think I can deactivate all the guards at once.” With that she was done, and just stood there. I knew she was doing her billions of calculations.
Loka and I went to the mess area and had coffee then talked to Garth who came in to grab a cup. “Most of it looks like fancy comm gear and analyzers, but the manuals don’t quite make sense to me—it may be the translator. Also something called an official star chart from the International Astronomical Union. I know that because she told me.” He snickered. “Well, back to work, that is a lot of junk she has.”
Lucy said, “Okay, I’m done. They all have a simple servo controlled internal switch. I think I saw a transmission console panel to the north-east. Be back in a bit.”
El came by a half-hour later. “Lucy says all the guard robots are shut down and she is off looking at something she found. We are to haul a chopper through the gate and get it ready to fly.”
I looked at the ceiling, maybe ten feet above my head. “To low to fly in here.”
“She knows, she is looking for the exit now. This place is huge!”
We went to look at the various stacks of equipment Lucy was sending back, most were strange, yet a lot felt almost familiar as well. Lucy showed up. “Interesting, most interesting. This place is sealed shut. Cancel the chopper for now. All this movement is the robots shuffling things around and around, over and over. I found the original entrance and exits but they were blown shut. Apparently we are under a mountain. I can see why no one found this gate.
“I have a plan to try and get free—it will take a bit. I want to reprogram all the guard ‘bots and get them using the lasers on the rock. They are pulsating so they should work, just need the time.”
For the next three weeks we shuffled items back through the gate and picked up a few more troops. Lord P even sent some Council members to visit us—most were quite impressed with the size and quantity of equipment stored here as well as the many gates and such in the Honor Center on our planet. I figure we had already jumped two or three hundred years in tech knowledge since we found Lucy and still had another thousand or more to go.
Lucy and El brought us all together. They had developed a basic safety plan to be used on all further expeditions, regardless of where.
El said it was simple, “We go through a gate enmass and secured the immediate area. We then immediately bring forward and build the portable fort we found in a storage room. It was designed to serve as a base camp. Once secure, a chopper could be brought forward and used as a scout ship/gun platform. As soon as it is safe, the fort would be disassembled and moved another ten miles away from our entry point and the point would be hidden as we remove traces of our origin. Just in case we get wiped out, it might help hide where we came from. We can expand from that point as required.”
Lucy added, “It was also decided that we will only take two door pens and both will be hidden in print boxes. You haven’t seen them, but I found a few. They respond to a human hand on the panel. The MKs would have to have a live human to use it, and know what it is. That way if we are caught or killed they can’t get access to the door. It reduces the risk and I don’t even know if they can speak yet.”
The fort was actually a simple and expandable affair made of lightweight aluminum alloy sections. Each was six foot long and four foot wide and had a thin rubber coating on the inside for grip. There were some that were three foot long and four wide as well so the floor could be staggered for some rigidity. The choppers could haul large stacks at a time. We practiced assembling them. On each side were two short troughs with steel pins and once fitted together a simple chain tie-down was popped into them to secure them tightly together. You laid out as many as you wanted for a floor then, when sized the way you wanted, the wall sections went up.
This was the harder part. We had the plans, they were attached to the fort parts, but we needed better translations. Some of it was confusing. You laid them out like the floor but they had hooks on the ends and pins in troughs on the sides plus a hinged flap with braces halfway up. They were eight foot long. What you did was lined up the hooks with the floor pins then lifted and balanced the section into place. The flap dropped and the two braces locked into holes in the floor with snap-hooks. This braced the wall up and the hinged part was now a walkway four foot off the ground. It was still wobbly. As each section was raised it was locked into the previous with chain tie-downs as well.
The corners were different. Probably the biggest pain. Each corner went up just like the side but they had an inch thick beam welded at a forty-five degree angle and full of holes along its entire length. Where it met the other corner you wrestled and pried to get the two corner sections to line up so you could bolt those rails together with the big one inch diameter nuts and bolts. The only parts not made of the lightweight alloy that I saw were the tie-down pins.
Once all four corners were in place you finally had a stable, rigid box with a firing platform/walkway all the way around it. Each wall’s center section had a panel that swung open, it was just short of four feet high, to act as a door which was secured with a dead bolt and had two drop in bars for additional security.
Lucy studied it and the manuals. “Apparently the original design was done late in Earth’s last hours as a desperation type defense position as the instructions are listed as drafts and it is titled, ‘Fort, portable defense, experimental, model 6 Alpha’.” It was quickly noted that at eight feet the taller MKs could reach over and snatch you with their pincer.
“But they had something that mounted on top, to the additional hooks, it isn’t here and nothing shows what went there.”
When we had it assembled in the big room you could stand on the walkway and just clear the ceiling with your head if you were under six feet tall.
El said, “This will be hell to raise in any kind of wind.”
Lucy said, “I know, poor design, but the idea is usable. I think I can rework it to make it better. Mainly attach the walls by hinges with a ratchet lock on them. As it is lifted up, the ratchets lock it at that position. In a wind it will prevent it from being blown down onto those trying to raise it. Don’t take it, I’ll send these plans and my mods to Lord P’s engineers and see what they think. I do know it is easily transportable by trucks or choppers so we’ll use the idea,” she said.
We hauled equipment to be sent back, took manuals and instructions, and we combed and probed and looked for anything to help us. Tici located what I was sure would turn out to be a major find several days later. Behind a huge stack of boxes and machinery he found a door. When he entered he excitedly called us all there.
Turned out it was a suite of offices with a small cafeteria and a room with some beds in it. A single room had video and control panels and switches. It took Lucy awhile to get there, she had been at the other end of this complex. But what we found that seemed to raise the greatest excitement was there were four skeletons, one in each bed and I could tell, they were not any different than ours. Lucy was right, they were like us.
When she arrived she had to start chasing the troops out, word spread like a raging fire as almost everyone in the place tried to see. El finally showed and hollered attention. She took charge and ran all but the HQ group off. “Give us some damn room to work for God’s sake!” I wondered which god. Our old First Queen Diboca Honor or the universal one.
After Lucy made an initial inspection El had one of the beds taken into the main warehouse so the troops could see what the fuss was about. I knew they seemed close from the video sticks, but to actually see skeletons gave credence to it.
“Main control room,” Lucy said. “Command suites, and a destroyed elevator shaft. I am unfamiliar with the equipment design and there isn’t any power in here. Tici, see if we can get some of the maintenance teams to start tracing the circuits and power this place back up, please?
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