Sakira Page 2

  “Prove it,” Blake said.

  “Here put this in your ear,” Marc said as he handed Blake one of the earwigs from his sample bag. He gave Blake the bag with the other comms in it. “Press it for three seconds, then talk to ADI, I’m going to take a shower and change and hope that you’re right and this is a hallucination.”

  Chapter 2

  What’s Next?

  “Hello, ADI,” Blake said.

  “Hello, Cer Blake,” ADI answered. “May I help you?”

  “So, you’re real?” Blake asked.

  “Of course I’m real,” ADI said.

  “Prove it,” Blake said.

  “Your name is Blake Augustus McCormack,” ADI said. “You’re thirty-two years old. You were a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy until two years ago when you were forced to eject from your fighter and were burned by the enemy’s exhaust plume.”

  Blake knew that most of that could be gotten off the internet, but the details of how he’d been injured were not public. Only those involved in the incident knew them.

  “Alright, I’ll play along, tell me about your fighters.”

  “What do you wish to know?”

  “How fast can they go?”

  “The fighters are FX4s, and they can reach zero-point-three times the speed of light in space.”

  “Wow, that’s freaking fast. What about down here?”

  “In atmosphere, the fighters can travel at one thousand nine hundred meters per second when above twenty-six thousand Pascals.”

  “Wait, give me the numbers in Mach, Gs, and feet,” Blake said.

  “In atmosphere, the FX4s can travel at Mach six-point-two when above fifty thousand feet and five-point-six when below two thousand feet.”

  “They’re fast. What’s the acceleration?”

  “They can do five Gs acceleration in space and four-point-five Gs in atmosphere. Their airframe can handle eight Gs of stress when turning either vertically or horizontally. The Paraxeans have approximately the same tolerance of acceleration that you humans have. To handle the higher G forces, you need to wear a compression suit.”

  “Been there,” Blake replied.

  “Of course,” ADI said. “The FX4 is much more advanced than the Super Hornet you flew.”

  “How do you know so much about me?” Blake asked.

  “I have internet access, and I’m able to get into most databases,” ADI said. “I started researching you as soon as your brother entered the Sakira.”

  “How can you have internet access when you’re four hundred meters below the sea? For that matter, how can you be talking through this earwig when you’re below that much water?” Blake asked.

  “Cer Blake, I’m sorry, that information is restricted. I cannot answer you without direct orders from the captain.”

  “Hey, he’s my brother!”

  “Cer Blake, I have protocols that I must follow.”

  “What’s the spec on the cutter?”

  “The LX9 has a max speed of Mach five-point-six when above fifty thousand feet and Mach five-point-two when below two thousand feet.”

  “Okay, that’s nice. Now tell me how big can the pilot be?” At 6’4”, Blake had been right at the max height for a fighter pilot in the Navy.

  “The LX9 is designed for two pilots sitting side by side. It can accommodate one whose sitting height is less than one-point-five meters. The FX4s have the same specs, but the pilot is forward, and the weapons officer is behind him. You will not have any problem fitting in the pilot seat of either craft.”

  “Hey, ADI, you’re smart. You knew right where I was going.”

  “Pilots are very similar in their goals.”

  “What do the aircraft carry for weapons?”

  “They all have four one-gigajoule lasers, two pointed forward, and two aft. They also carry a plasma cannon in their nose, the FX4s have a railgun as well as an additional plasma cannon in their tails.”

  “What are the ranges?”

  “The plasma cannon has a range of one thousand meters, the laser’s range is six hundred meters at twenty thousand feet. It drops as the air becomes denser. In vacuum, the range is one thousand meters. The railgun fires its projectile at plus five km per second in space; their range is theoretically infinite.”

  “What are their firing arcs?”

  “The cannon has a thirty-degree firing arc, the forward lasers have a one-hundred-seventy-degree firing arc, and the rear lasers have a two-hundred-twenty-degree firing arc. The railgun has a zero-degree firing arc.”

  “Now that’s some serious firepower. What is the takeoff distance?”

  “For the FX4s one thousand meters, the LX9 takes one thousand six hundred meters.”

  “What’s their flight range?”

  “In atmosphere, it is virtually unlimited. In space, the flight distance is dependent on the fuel load, typically, it is three light hours.”

  “Man, I’m loving those babies. Hey, how do we get them out of the water? Do you have to bring them up?”

  “The FX4 and the LX9 can both maneuver in water. They are airtight and watertight, and the engines can perform with water as the media as well as atmosphere.”

  “What is their speed in water?”

  “The FX4 and the LX9 can do thirty-two knots underwater and one hundred twenty knots on the surface before they generate enough lift to go airborne.”

  “Even better,” Blake said. He had been holding the bag that Marc had given him after pulling the earwig out of it. He looked inside, “Hey, what are these glasses for?”

  “They are similar to what you would call a heads-up display,” ADI replied. “They can also provide full immersion three-D imagery.”

  “Wow, I’ve got to check these suckers out,” Blake exclaimed. “But first, I’d better get to the bridge in case I actually need to drive this boat.” Blake got up, climbed the ladder to the bridge deck and sat down in the pilot’s seat. He checked the radar and did a visual inspection of the horizon.

  “No ships in sight. Radar’s clear, so let’s play with these things,” he said as he put a pair of glasses on. “So how does the heads-up display work?”

  “The normal usage is to inquire data from the associated comm computer. They are in the bag you’re holding, but when we are communicating, I can take over that function. If you look up, you will see the menu area; of course, it has been translated into English. If you focus on one item and blink once, it will activate that item or bring up a submenu if that is appropriate. It can also react to your voice if you wish.”

  “Okay, let’s see what darken does,” Blake said. He focused on the menu option and blinked; a slider came up in the HUD, he moved his eyes to the right, and the indicator tracked his eye movement. He blinked again and the slider went away.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Take the glasses off and look at the front.”

  Blake did as instructed. When he looked at the other side, the glasses were completely dark; he couldn’t see through them, while before they had been transparent. When he turned them around and looked through them as he would when wearing them, they were transparent. “Cool, privacy shades.”

  Blake put the glasses back on, “So once I figure out the menu, I can look things up like I do on my laptop.”

  “That is correct. You can also customize the menu and create a situational display. For instance, you could have the ship radar, its speed, direction and other parameters set to come up with a single menu click. Then you could quickly check the situation out to determine if you needed to come to the bridge. Of course, that would require adding wireless connections to the boat’s instruments.”

  “Way cool. Now show me the three-D immersion thing.”

  “Wow, now that is something else,” Blake exclaimed as the view of the sundeck came up in three-D. Marc was just coming up the ladder, having freshly showered and dressed.

  “Blake, you’re still here, you didn’t abandon ship?” Marc said as he climbed up to the s
undeck of their 35-meter yacht.

  “Hell no, I didn’t abandon ship! I’ve been up here gathering intel.”

  When Marc reached the sundeck, he went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers. He sat down at the table behind the pilot’s chair, setting one beer down across the table from him; then he opened the second one and took a long drink. Blake did a quick check of the radar and got up to join Marc, grabbing the beer and opening it.

  “Well this is a fine mess we’re in,” Marc quipped.

  “I’m not sure it’s so bad. We do have a spaceship and four fighters.”

  “What did you find out about them?”

  “They are some serious bad-ass weapons. You could wreak some serious damage just with the four you have, and that cutter isn’t too bad either.”

  “That’s good to know if we ever find ourselves fighting in a war.”

  “So, you figure out what you’re going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know really. The one thing I do know is that we need to keep it secret.”

  “Yeah, Duh!” Blake said. “Word gets out, the government will step in and you’ll never hear of it again, that is, if they let you live.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Marc said. “And you wanted to buzz the ISS.”

  “A moment of insanity,” Blake said. “So, what’s next?”

  “We have to stay focused on the sonar system.”

  “Why?”

  “We need money, we need time, and god knows we need a plan.”

  “Okay, I concede your point.”

  “We need to map a new area out for the fourth trial. It should only take us two days. Then I can announce and take bids. I’ll sell the design instead of trying to build the company. That will give us the cash reserves to figure out what to do. You’ll need to continue the charter business.”

  “Why do a fourth trial? … DUH, I guess you don’t want to present the funky data where the ship is.”

  “Right!”

  “Captain, I can move the ship if you are worried someone else will find it,” ADI told Marc.

  “I think we should just leave things as they are for now,” Marc replied. “By the way, how do you get these earwigs out of your ear?”

  “You’re talking to ADI?” Blake said.

  “If you press them for eight seconds, they will release,” ADI explained to Marc.

  Marc waited until ADI had finished her explanation. “Yes.”

  “Why can’t I hear her?” Blake asked.

  “Captain, I have set the communication up so that I am conversing with each of you on separate channels,” ADI told Marc. “I can combine the channels if you wish.”

  “She’s talking on two channels,” Marc said. “ADI, please combine the channels.”

  “Thanks,” Blake said.

  “So why keep going with the charter business?” Blake asked.

  “Two things. Money and we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. People will think it strange that we have this multimillion-dollar yacht and don’t seem to be worried about money. You have to be worth a few hundred mil to own one of these babies and not be running a business from it. And you know the last owners were running drugs.”

  “Yeah, I guess that could lead to some serious attention. So, I keep running the charters, no big deal, I just get three or four a month anyway. Plenty of time to work on a plan.”

  “Right, and with Catie coming next week, we don’t want things to seem out of the ordinary.”

  Blake winced, “I guess you wouldn’t want to share this with your daughter.”

  “She’s twelve! If she finds out, she’ll probably tell her mother, then her mother will freak out and tell the feds, then we’ll be screwed.”

  “I don’t think she’d tell her mother,” Blake said. “She can keep a secret.”

  “Do you want to bet your life on it?”

  “No, I guess not. So, we stick with plan A.”

  “Yes, plan A until it falls apart, or we have a better plan.”

  “Okay, I had a couple of questions which ADI told me I wasn’t important enough to trust the answers to.”

  “ADI, please explain,” Marc asked.

  “My protocols restrict certain information to be solely under the purview of the captain.”

  “So, what happens if I tell my brother?”

  “That is allowed, but you have to tell him or instruct me to tell him.”

  “Okay, so tell him.”

  “Captain, I can only tell him when you explicitly tell me which information to share,” ADI told Marc

  “Okay Blake, ask your questions again.”

  “ADI, how are you able to communicate with us when you’re under four hundred meters of water?” Blake asked.

  “Captain.”

  “Please answer the question, ADI.”

  “I am using a quantum-coupled relay to a small drone that is sitting on your radar platform,” ADI replied. “I can communicate instantly with it independent of the media separating us, then it normally relays to your comm unit. However, since it’s so close to you, it is communicating directly to the earwig using a twenty-gigahertz channel.”

  “A quantum-coupled relay,” Blake said with a puzzled look.

  Marc waved his hand at Blake, signaling him to be quiet. “How did the drone get on our radar platform?”

  “Once your remote vehicle approached the Sakira, I launched a drone to determine what was happening. It maintained a position close to your boat while you were diving and in the Sakira. When you returned to your boat, I landed it on the radar platform so we could continue to communicate.”

  “What is the range of the relay?”

  “The quantum coupling has no range limit. The earwig’s link has approximately one hundred meters of range to the comm unit or the drone depending on atmospheric conditions. The comm units have a range of approximately one thousand kilometers to the drone.”

  “How will you be able to stay in contact with us when we’re not close to the drone?” Blake asked.

  “Captain, that is another subject that takes explicit instructions to reveal. Should I only communicate the answer to your comm?” ADI asked Marc.

  Blake looked startled as his comm cut out and he didn’t hear ADI’s answer to Marc’s question.

  “Communicate it to both of us,” Marc said.

  “The comm units can communicate to one of the satellites that are in orbit around the planet.”

  “Geez!” Blake exclaimed.

  “How many satellites and why hasn’t NASA or some other space agency found them? Include Blake in the answer,” Marc said.

  “There are twenty-two satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They are very mobile, and like the hull of the ship, they absorb energy directed at them. They will not reflect light or any electromagnetic energy,” ADI explained.

  “But they would block out the sun or moon or something,” Blake said.

  “They are only two meters in diameter,” ADI replied. “The light or EM energy just wraps around them. At an altitude of five hundred kilometers, they are insignificant in the field of view.”

  “What else can these satellites do?” Marc continued.

  “They have optical cameras that record activity on the surface of the planet. They also pick up any EM energy and record it for later analysis. If they detect a satellite or spacecraft closing in on them, they alter their orbit appropriately until the object passes.”

  “How do they maintain geosync at the high latitudes?” Marc asked.

  “They have sufficient energy available to augment their orbit to keep it stable.”

  “That’s a lot of energy,” Blake said. “What is powering those things?”

  “Captain?”

  “Answer the question, ADI.”

  “They have a fusion reactor and use a gravitational drive for propulsion.”

  “A gravitational drive!” Blake slapped the side of his head. “Now we’re talking …”

  Marc motioned Blake to b
e quiet. “A fusion reactor?” he asked, arching his eyebrows.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “How big is this fusion reactor? And, yes, let Blake hear,” Marc asked.

  “It occupies a volume of three-point-five cubic meters,” ADI replied.

  “Wow that’s small,” Blake said.

  Marc nodded his head as he leaned back in his seat and took another long swig of his beer.

  “Well it looks like we can cure global warming,” Blake said.

  “I guess,” Marc sighed. “What is the fuel for the reactors?”

  “They run on deuterium or helium four,” ADI said.

  “I’m sorry, Marc, but beer is not going to cut it,” Blake said as he walked over to the kitchenette and grabbed a couple of glasses and a bottle of scotch. He poured each of them a generous amount then sat back down.

  “Oh, king of all you survey, what do you command,” Blake jested as he held his glass up in a toast.

  “Oh shit. Why me?” Marc moaned.

  “Because you passed the test,” ADI said.

  “What test?” Blake asked.

  “The test I gave the captain when he came aboard the ship,” ADI replied.

  “I wouldn’t call that a test,” Marc said. “It was more like an inquisition.”

  “I already apologized for the severity of the test. It was necessary to determine whether you were likely to use the resources of the ship and me for personal gain. The test predicted that instead you would use the Sakira's resources to better the entire planet,” ADI said.

  “Oh, it did, did it?” Marc scoffed.

  “Yes, there is only a zero-point-two percent probability that you would allow greed and personal power to guide your decisions,” ADI replied. “While there was a ninety-eight percent probability that you would focus on saving humanity from itself.”

  “That’s my brother,” Blake barked. “The good guy to the very end.”

  Marc downed the rest of his scotch, leaned back and shook his head.

  “I have a headache!” he moaned.

  Chapter 3

  Daddy, I’m here

  Catie followed her mother to the gate counter for her flight to Hawaii. “I don’t see why we have to go through all this rigmarole just so I can fly by myself.”