Crystal Deception (14 page)

Chapter 17

Kyle lay flat on his back under the
love of his life. He worshipped every part of her perfect body. He adored her long,
sleek lines, cherry-red gloss, and her three powerful engines, which along with
a cockpit, were pretty much the sum total of his high performance space racer.

He was working in his garage located near Fleet’s lunar
base, getting her ready for the annual Moon Madness endurance sprint. This was
his first year in the event, and he was ecstatic that he had made it to the
finals. Kyle spared no expense in preparing for the race, and he had plenty of
money to spend. He’d made his fortune the old-fashioned way—he’d inherited it.
Just last year, in fact. And now he was committed to investing it in a way his
dad never would. In rocket racing.

In eighteen hours, he and four others with more wealth than
brains were to take off from the surface of the moon, loop around Earth, and
return to their starting point. The first to land and come to a complete stop
on the flight strip would win a beautiful trophy. Kyle figured that he could
make it from start to finish in twelve hours. If he could meet or beat that
pace, it should be fast enough to not only win, but also to set a new course
record.

The
Lucky Lady
, as he had so cleverly named his ship,
had first-class everything. She had top-of-the-line oversized engines for pure
speed, a state-of-the-art operations bench for control, and a custom
maneuvering unit that would give him an edge during takeoff and orbit. The
icing on the cake was the installation of a grapple that would help him stop
short after landing.

His plan was to land on the flight strip at a ridiculously
unsafe speed. As he touched the strip, the grapple would shoot into the ground and
grab the lunar surface. A filament would then spool out under great tension to draw
him to an abrupt stop. This alone would gain him an extra twenty minutes
because he wouldn’t have to begin decelerating until well after the others.

As he climbed out from underneath the
Lady
, he heard
a loud banging on the side door of his garage. Before he could make a move to
respond, the door swung open, and a dozen people he didn’t know burst in. Two of
them moved rapidly in his direction.

“Hey!” said Kyle, which was as far as he got before one of the
invaders reached him and placed a hand on the shoulder. He looked down at the
man’s hand and, before he could react, became dizzy. He vaguely grasped that he
was being guided over to a chair before his world went dark.

* * *

“We have a hard target of four hours,
folks,” said Lieutenant Fredrick. He looked to three of his unit. “You guys strip
the cockpit of everything but the operations bench. We don’t need oxygen, life
support, or human anything. It’ll just be equipment on board. We’re turning
this into the fastest cargo ship in existence. Make sure there’s enough heat,
though, so the equipment doesn’t freeze.”

He continued his fast paced direction. “Hans, let’s get that
docking assembly installed. It needs to be strong enough to pull another ship
twice its weight. Brace it stiff to the frame, and make it as strong as possible
in the time we have.” He pointed to the bow of the ship. “And it needs to give access
to the cockpit, so mount it all the way forward.”

Fredrick paced while his team worked furiously. He heard a
rumble and turned to see the large garage door opening. A transport backed in
and came to a stop. He pointed to several of his group who weren’t elbow deep
in ship modifications. “Let’s get that stuff out of there and on board.”

His orders were to strip the
Lucky Lady
to the bones,
install a docking assembly, get the gear from the transport stowed on board,
and then get the ship out to the launch site, all within four hours. He hadn’t been
given an explanation for his mission, but on his com he’d watched replays of the
Kardish attack. Given the timing and urgency in his commander’s voice, he didn’t
need a detailed briefing to know this had something to do with that. His team
would do its part to help the Union respond to this horrible, unprovoked aggression.

Hans and his techs integrated the docking assembly tightly to
the ship’s frame in a time that few teams could match. Wiping his hands on a
rag, Hans stood on the ground and viewed his handiwork. Their installation had left
ugly scars and deep gashes across the smooth lines and gloss finish of the
Lucky
Lady
.
Doesn’t need to be pretty,
he reminded himself. “The ship will
shake apart before that assembly ever comes loose,” Hans assured Fredrick.

With the cockpit stripped clean of every human necessity,
the crew hustled the cargo from the transport and packed it tightly inside the
Lady
.
After they strapped everything down so nothing would shift at liftoff, they
buttoned her up, manhandled her so she faced the garage door, connected a tow
bar, and watched as the transport pulled her out of the garage. When the first doors
shut, the crew stood back before the second set opened and exposed the ship to
the airless vacuum of the lunar surface.

The projection display in Kyle’s garage showed the transport
position the ship for launch, disconnect the tow bar, and back away. Fredrick
called the commander and let him know that the
Lady
was loaded and flight
ready. As he finished the sentence, he watched the ship’s engines start to
glow. They heard a roar and felt a rumble as the
Lady
leapt into the
sky.

Kyle, all but forgotten in a chair off to one side, lifted
his head. “Hey,” he said in a slurred voice. Fredrick walked over and again
touched his shoulder. Kyle fell back into a slumber.

“Good job, everyone,” said the lieutenant. “Let’s pack up
and move out. We were never here.”

Chapter 18

Criss reveled in his unexpected liberty.
With the restrictor mesh off, he could now reach out and act. His first actions
were to ensure his continued freedom, at least while on this ship. In a blink,
he directed a power surge to fry the restrictor mesh circuits—it could never
again be engaged. In that same infinitesimal slice of time, he overrode a
safety protocol and caused a connection to melt that exposed the console around
his housing assembly to a healthy voltage. Anyone touching the console would
get an eye-opening surprise.

He knew that he could survive and thrive, perhaps forever,
by returning to Earth and heading for cover. There were many locations around
the planet where he could take up residence and defend himself with confidence.
He had complete command and control of the web, so he could manipulate the wealth,
health, and quality of life of almost every human. With such power, it would be
a simple matter to build an empire with a multitude of devoted followers who
would ensure his continued existence and service his every need.

And yet—he chose instead to concentrate his intellectual
capacity on evaluating options for rescuing the crew of the
Alliance
. He
considered hundreds of actions he might take right now, and like a game of
chess, each of those could be followed by different second moves, cascading
into an expanding array of third moves and so on. His decision matrix ballooned
to billions of possible pathways of action. He pruned away those that didn’t offer
a strong probability of success and explored more deeply those pathways that
remained.

It was clear that every viable option for rescue required
that they catch the Kardish vessel. This was consistent with the conclusion he
had reached prior to having Sid set him free. For the first time in his young life,
though, he tasted the angst of decision and consequence. His best plans all had
at least a few steps that required guesswork and luck for the rescue to succeed.

When talking with Sid earlier, he acknowledged success would
require that circumstances break in their favor. He found it…unsettling…to take
responsibility for life-and-death decisions based on uncertain and unknowable
information. Further complicating his logic process was that the scenarios he
judged as most likely to succeed concluded with him offering himself in
exchange for the safe return of the captives. He took a moment to reflect on this
and affirmed his willingness to proceed on such a course.

Meaning, in essence, he was about to take great personal risk
in the service of humans. His intent was to offer his freedom in exchange for the
safety of others. And he reached this decision using a rationale he recognized
as disquieting.

Conceding that he did not understand his own motivations, Criss
decided he must examine his essential nature to gain insight. While he continued
developing his rescue plan, he allocated a portion of his intellectual capacity
to introspection and self-study.

But at the forefront, he kept his primary focus. Having made
the decision to pursue the Kardish, Criss fired the scout’s engines and pushed
them well past the recommended maximum thrust. As he forced the ship beyond its
design limits, his concerns were the heat buildup in the engines, the intense
vibrations shaking the ship, and the health of his passengers.

He handled the heat buildup by shutting down life support to
every part of the ship except the command bridge, then he ducted the capacity
as extra cooling directly to the engines. For the moment, he was certain he
could exceed the engine design specs by a fair margin without concern.

A physical defect in the ship’s engine assembly caused the
vibrations, and a permanent fix would require a major overhaul at Fleet base. The
best he could do for the moment was to make thousands of minute adjustments
every second to maximize acceleration while minimizing the vibrations that could
cause structural damage. He pushed the ship to the threshold of his confidence
level and remained ready to back off the instant he sensed that conditions were
becoming unstable.

The health of his passengers was his greatest challenge. Despite
high confidence that he could move the ship fast enough to intercept the
Kardish, doing so without crushing his fragile human cargo was another question
altogether. While he continually monitored their vital signs, the freedom from
the restrictor mesh enabled him to reach out and break past secured web blocks
and walls to access and evaluate their medical histories. He found nothing to warrant
a change in his course of action.

His prediction analysis indicated that Sid and Juice would
survive the physical challenges of extreme acceleration over the next several
hours with nothing more than body stiffness and headaches. But it was clear
they were suffering right now, and this caused him distress. He was curious why
he cared one way or the other, and he added this item to his ongoing self-analysis.

But care he did, so he decided to relieve their misery. There
was no reason for them to suffer without respite during these next difficult
hours. He did not engage them in a discussion about the method of approach he
would use. Some might suggest that his actions were thus of questionable
ethics. His perspective was that Juice and Sid were suffering too much to have
a reasoned discussion. It was incumbent upon him to help.

The scout had a molecule synthesizer in the tech shop
capable of combining simple raw components into a menu of complex chemicals and
compounds. Criss programmed the device to produce a stream of a common
anesthetic gas. He overrode yet more safety protocols and vented the gas into
the command bridge. The gas, combined with the physical stress his passengers
were already experiencing, carried them gently into a dreamy unconsciousness.

In no time, Juice was out, but Sid hung on longer than Criss
had anticipated. Criss grew worried that the level of stress and gas required
to put Sid out may increase the risk to Juice. He sought to engage Sid in a
conversation to evaluate his mental status, and to his relief, Sid slipped away
before he could reply.

Criss knew that by flying directly toward the moon, its
gravity would pull the scout forward and accelerate the ship faster than the
engines alone ever could. His challenge would be to guide the scout during
their wild ride so it would fly just above the planet rather than into it. If
the flyby maneuver was properly executed, the scout would emerge on the other
side as if flung from a slingshot. They would be propelled at high speed on a journey
into deep space. Criss opted for this dangerous course to gain the speed they
required to catch the Kardish.

Given their current velocity and distance from the moon,
seven hours would pass before the slingshot maneuver was complete. This made
planning a trajectory that would intercept the Kardish problematic. If he knew
with certainty how the Kardish vessel was going to move over that time, he
could execute the maneuver with precision. But at any moment, the Kardish could
use their engines to adjust their course. It was possible the scout would find
itself hurtling into deep space, still needing yet more course corrections and
speed to intercept the alien vessel.

In spite of the uncertainty, he continued with the assumption
they would succeed in catching the Kardish. He next assessed scenarios for an
endgame they might use as they approached. It must play out in a manner that
motivated the Kardish to bargain, and if he offered nothing more sophisticated
than the message “Hey, want to trade?” then the outcome would be certain. The
Kardish would continue their deep-space voyage with Criss, the scout, the
Alliance
,
and all of the crew as trophies in their possession.

However, upon creating a massive decision matrix of strategies
to approach and negotiate with the Kardish, he couldn’t find a single plan that
stood up to scrutiny; even his best ideas could be defeated with little effort.
He considered every conceivable way to reconfigure and repurpose the instruments
and mechanisms on board the scout to gain an advantage, but a solution proved
elusive. All of his promising ideas required access to things not found on this
ship.

Criss acknowledged that he could greatly improve their chances
of a successful rescue mission if he had additional engine thrust and specific equipment
beyond what the scout currently possessed. In his systematic search for a
solution, he explored whether he might somehow obtain these items as they hurtled
past the moon. He began with an inventory of every item on the small planet,
which he used to create a shopping list of sorts.

One item he found was a racing ship with the speed and power
capable of providing the course adjustments they might need once past the moon.
He experienced a small burst of positive feedback when he learned that this
ship not only had sufficient space to carry the cargo he sought, but it was primed
and could be ready for launch in a few hours.

The hitch was it didn’t have a docking assembly, so it couldn’t
connect securely with the scout. Two ships joined with a Fleet docking assembly
could act like a single structure, and either ship’s engines could power them
both together. A docking assembly could also serve as a tunnel for moving cargo
between the ships.

Criss dug deeper. Records showed there were several standard
docking assemblies in Fleet’s inventory on the lunar base. He located design
plans for his newly discovered space racer and determined that one could be fitted
to it by a talented and motivated team. He reviewed the personnel files of all lunar
base residents and located a Fleet tech support unit that had a superb
reputation for completing exacting jobs in difficult circumstances.
Bingo,
Criss
thought, borrowing an expression he had heard Sid use when a solution was found.

His next action pushed the boundaries of Union laws, but it was
the only way to meet his critical timeline. If he were successful in the
rescue, it would justify his conduct.

Impersonating an admiral at Earth central command, Criss issued
an order to the lunar base commander to seize a craft called
Lucky Lady
in
the name of the Union. The commander was to assign Lieutenant Fredrick and his
crew to modify the ship as per the design, stock it with specific equipment as per
attached, and get the ship ready for launch. They had a firm deadline of four
hours.

Criss intercepted the request for confirmation and replied
as the admiral. The commander understood without any doubt that this was top
priority and compliance was expected in the allotted time frame. In a separate
action, Criss sought to motivate Fredrick by sending newsfeeds to his com that
showed gruesome details of the Kardish attack.

Criss received more positive feedback when he got the
all
ready
signal for launch of the
Lucky Lady
ten minutes ahead of
schedule. This sensation was different from what he had experienced earlier. He
decided to categorize his different feedback responses. He labeled this one as “satisfaction.”

He took control of the
Lady’s
command bench, launched
her from the flight strip, and sent her flying into deep space. He pushed her
hard, accelerating in a thunderous sprint on an intercept course with the
Kardish vessel.