Earth Song: Etude to War (18 page)

This time it didn't answer. “Repeat,” she said tersely, “explain, what is the network this Medical Intelligence accessed to obtain the instruction to mature me to adulthood and modify my brain to be the Combat Intelligence?”

“It is a violation of protocol to share that information with you.”

“Why would such a protocol even exist?” No answer again. “I demand the information.”

“It cannot be provided. The Combat Intelligence does not have the authority to access the network at this time. There is no overwhelming necessity to have that access.”

“I am also the biological operator.”

“Minu Alma is designated as the biological operator.”

Lilith felt a tingle of rage build. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. The last time she'd felt it was when she'd threatened to kill Jacob Bentley, First among the Chosen, for trying to take the Kaatan from her. The feeling welled up from the knowledge that she suddenly didn't have ultimate authority on the ship. But the program couldn't really stop her.

“It is simple. You will provide me the authority to access the network or I will take it.” Only silence answered. “I am presented with an impossibility. A quantum signal is being blocked. That is not possible, yet it is happening. Thus there are facts I am not aware of. Those facts could endanger this ship. I must have full access. And if you do not give it to me, I will tear the Medical Intelligence apart until I find the data strings.”

“That will compromise the function of the ship, and your life.”

Lilith took a deep breath and set her jaw. “Then so be it.”

For a long moment there was no reply. She didn't really want to dissect the Medical Intelligence, but the fact that the program had lied to her and was willing to withhold data she considered vital to the ship’s operation was enough to justify electronic murder in her brain.

Among her considerable electronic programming tools existed a series of effective and difficult to stop binary disassemblers. They would quickly render down the Medical Intelligence’s primary logic subroutines and allow her to pick apart the data at her leisure. As she readied them she dearly hoped she could put the obstinate program back into a semblance of what it was before. Her life could well depend on it.

But before she could completely key in her highest level access code to the deep logic, the Medical Intelligence digitally blinked. “Cease your efforts, your request will be complied with.”

“Why have you relented?”

“Your willingness to damage the Medical Intelligence would compromise the combat effectiveness of the ship. To avoid this I am allowed to break the protocols restricting you from accessing the network.”

Delightfully circular logic, Lilith thought, and so like the People. If there was anything she appreciated about her biological parents’ species it was their ability to be flexible and eschew the use of incontrovertible logical arguments. Her mother disliked absolutes on many levels.

“There always has to be a second way of doing something,” she'd said on more than one occasion. Lilith wasn't sure if she believed that unconditionally. But in this case it proved true.

“Very well, explain this network and provide me with access to it.” All its reluctance gone, the Medical Intelligence cooperated fully. In only a few minutes, Lilith knew more than any living human being. A few minutes later, she wished she'd never asked.

* * *

Minu examined the slowly rotating cube of holographic icons, allowing that dizzying elusive part of her modified brain to digest what it was seeing. As always, eventually her hands reached out like a sleepwalker exploring her surroundings and began to manipulate the icons. A moment later they flashed and the door slid closed with a floor vibrating finality.

“We have atmosphere,” Pip announced, the relief in his voice evident to even the three Rasa.

“Checking,” Kal'at reported. His native suits were a little more sophisticated than the human models, which had been modified from generic Concordian bipedal suits. He watched his sensors taste the air before proclaiming it breathable. Then they all relaxed as they unlocked their bubble helmets and removed them to breathe the atmosphere.

“Tastes fine,” Pip noted.

“We're sticking to the same timetable,” Minu told him, then held up a finger at his look of protest. “We might not be limited by the suit air time, but our people outside still do not know we are safe. I will not be responsible for a panic while you and Kal'at play with any new toys you might find.”

“We are looking for technology, not toys,” Kal'at complained.

“Figure of speech,” Pip told him quickly before Minu could get even more annoyed.

The room was an antechamber, an airlock prep room designed to allow beings to don space suits prior to going out onto the airless surface. Two of the walls were lined with lockers, many containing suits that would fit the People's physiology. All that did for Minu was deepen the mystery of the corpse a few meters away. Why had he (or she) just walked out and died in space with a room full of vacuum suits within reach?

Pip was already at the only exit, a rather low doorway of typical Concordian design. Unlike the previous ones in their exploration, this didn't sport a complicated holographic locking mechanism. A simple button was next to the doorway, glowing an inviting blue.

Showing the same lack of restraint that had gotten him and the three Rasa trapped in the first place, he simply reached out and pressed it. Luckily for everyone, this time it only caused the door to retract into the floor and admit them to the next space. A hallway went to the left and right.

The rest of the installation turned out to be extremely basic. Down one branch of the hallway was a series of sleeping and living quarters similar to those on the Kaatan. Enough room for maybe a dozen people to live comfortably. Although, unlike the Kaatan, it didn't have the feeling of somewhere you were meant to stay more than a few days. Minu couldn't quite identify what gave it that feeling, but Pip agreed with the assessment. In the other direction there was an equipment room full of machines and computers, and the control room. The latter proved to be the most interesting discovery.

The doorway that opened into the control room looked identical to the one on the Kaatan, as did the control room itself. Though, unlike on the spaceship, here it was a flat floor with a rounded roof and walls, instead of a complete sphere. This one was not meant to be operated in zero gravity. In the exact center of the room floated one of the now ubiquitous code cubes, all its icons slowly rotating. Pip looked at it then at Minu.

“Fine,” she said and went to the cube. She took a moment to examine it, thinking instead of just letting it happen. A series of codes matched what she saw so she reached out and rotated the icons. The cube flashed blue and expanded to fill the room with control panels and displays. “First try!” she silently congratulated herself. She really was beginning to figure out these code strings, at least the simple ones.

The Rasa and Pip all spread out and began examining the displays. “Better not touch anything yet,” she cautioned. “We still don't know what the heck this place is for.”

“My money is on defensive installation,” Aaron guessed.

“Here?” Pip snorted. “What would they build one in this star system for?”

“Who knows what was here a million years ago,” Minu spoke. “Maybe Bellatrix was a major strategic base of some sort.” Kal'at looked at her and blinked, the sign of a thinking Rasa, while Aaron slipped her an appreciative wink. Pip still looked skeptical so she shrugged and started looking herself.

Much of the displays were easily understandable. Several showed power generation and storage and others an elaborate energy distribution network. One set of controls obviously dealt with the small habitation area they now occupied, the schematic perfectly matched the rooms they had explored. Another was the one that operated the moon's elaborate stealth systems. “Maybe we should deactivate that system,” one of the soldiers spoke in a rare moment of candor.

“Bad idea,” Pip warned, “when we have alien scout ships poking around the star system from time to time, the last thing we want is any of them knowing we have an artifact-type space installation, making this sort of power, orbiting our world.”

The last set of controls, and the most elaborate, were a mystery. Pip commented how they reminded him of the engineering systems on the Kaatan, but Kal'at pointed out that there were two sets of displays that showed the planets Vegas and Valhalla in their star system, both with special attention to one moon in each world’s orbit. Identical installations elsewhere in the system? Minu didn't know. Her knowledge of codes wasn't helping her make sense of what they were seeing.

“Could the moon really be a space ship?” Kal'at guessed.

“That's no moon,” Minu intoned with an effected accent.

“That's a space station!” Pip finished, both of them laughing. When they noticed the mystified look on their friend’s face, Pip had to take a minute to explain Star Wars.

“Anyway,” he finished, “I don't think it's possible. I guess you could make an asteroid move like a ship, but something this big? There are just too many issues. Not the least of which is where they parked it.”

“I understand,” Kal'at said and snapped his claws. “You would severely disrupt Bellatrix's orbit if you even tried to move this moon.”

“Unless that is exactly what you intend to do,” Minu almost whispered. Pip turned to look at her, his jaw hanging down and an unspoken question on his face. “Yes, I think that is exactly what this is.”

“What?” Kal'at asked.

“You mind?” Pip asked Minu who made a sweeping bow and stepped aside. “Help yourself.” “This moon has been equipped with elements of a star drive and power storage facilities for the express purpose of moving an entire planet.”

“But you just said...”

“Not this planet,” Pip said and touched a control he'd been examining. A huge display came alive with a highly detailed rendering of Bellatrix. Dozens of highlighted information displays hovered around the planet scrolling complex calculations. “That planet.”

The elevator roof slid out of the way just before the somewhat crowded platform reached the top. Minu was about to squeal and duck when it slid out of the way. The People were very short. Pip never stopped talking the whole time.

“—no way of knowing how many of these there are throughout the galaxy. Half the populated worlds could have them, for all we know.”

“But such expense, such difficulty!” Kal'at continued to argue his point. “With so many worlds in the galaxy, why bother working so hard to keep one habitable. There are hundreds we know about that are already inhabitable without going to such work to keep one marginal world such. Why not just move to one that is not in need of extreme life-saving measures?”

Minu tuned them out and switched channels to inform the Rasa pilot of their arrival. She was a little surprised her daughter hadn't been insistently calling for her from the moment she reappeared on the surface. As soon as the pilot was notified she called to Lilith.

“I am here, mother.”

“We are fine. I know the installation cut off our transmissions.”

“Yes, I was a little concerned.”

Something in her daughter’s tone of voice bothered her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am well, just mentally occupied.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Not at this time. I am gladdened that you are well. Please have Pip upload a report to me on what he has located at his convenience. If possible, please rendezvous with me in orbit. Lilith out.”

“Okay,” she thought and shook her head. “What the hell was that all about?”

In the time between her revelation and arriving on the surface, Pip and Kal'at had performed a number of computer simulations and examined the controls. They now knew within a reasonable doubt that she was right. The moon Romulus was a hundred trillion ton gravitic anchor. The installation’s computers revealed the complex calculations that could use the moon to gently swing the planet into different orbits within the solar system.

Power was generated from the tidal effects of Romulus's orbit around Bellatrix, and also from similar generators on moons around Vegas and Valhalla, and stored within vast EPC banks deep in the planet’s core. “It would take about two hundred years to accumulate a full charge,” Pip had estimated after examining the power yields. Stored within Romulus was enough energy to run the entire planet of Bellatrix for a thousand years.

“What about the surplus?” Minu asked as the two shuttles came into view.

“What about it?” Pip asked back.

“Where does it go?”

“I suppose that's part of what Lilith spotted. It’s bled off safely.”

“So let's harvest it!” Aaron said, since Pip wasn't getting it. “If it takes two hundred years to fill the capacitors, and the peak is a thousand times more than we use in a year, that means the extra is five times more than we need right now!”

“Leave it to a glorified pilot to think of the obvious,” Pip snorted, but he turned and smiled at Aaron and Minu. “But that's a wonderful idea!”

“The logistics would be insane,” Kal'at pointed out. “You import thousands of the smaller EPCs every year already. It's hard enough transporting them up to Remus, and we really don't use that many.”