POD (The Pattern Universe) (21 page)

Osbourne smiled. “I don’t see a problem with that, Dr. Goeth. No problem at all.” With that, he guided him back to the Mother-ship where they discussed the transfer of it and the gunships to Space Island. There was much of the technology that was parallel with their own, which was hardly surprising considering they had been filching data from each other since this whole thing started.

Behind his calm and accommodating exterior, Osbourne was itching to put Goeth in his place and send him to jail for the murder of Jannson. However, there were exceedingly good reasons for not doing that, maybe never doing it. One of them was sitting on the suppressor mat in front of them - the Mother-ship.

Like Zeke, Osbourne would do whatever was necessary to put the world into space and help humanity begin a new millennia of space travel. He was aware that there was trouble brewing, it was part of that which drove him relentlessly forward in his labs, knowing he had to be one step ahead of Fortress, and at the same time prepare for an outside invader. An invader that was superior to them by an order of magnitude that placed humans on a par with the caveman by comparison.

“Dr. Goeth, we need this Mother-ship to be programmed to receive our verbal commands, can we go to the forward section and organise that?” asked Lieutenant Baxter, who was busy trying to coordinate the evacuation of the civilians including Goeth’s lab team.

“Ah, I see Mr. Burgess over there, he’s the IT specialist of our group, he is the best person to help you with Medusa,” Goeth responded, pleased to see his people were going to be part of the island team and thinking perhaps not all of his seniority had dissipated with the demise of Ferris. “Although, I did develop the processors, he has the coding skills that brought Medusa to life.

Burgess looked up as his name was mentioned and walked cross the ship’s deck towards them. “Did someone take my name in vain?” he smiled. Osbourne took an immediate liking to his easy going manner and confidence.

“We need to take control of the Medusa AI verbally, it's only programmed to respond to your mainframe which no longer exists,” Baxter explained to them. “We want to use this ship as a transporter to get everyone from here to the Island. With Ferris gone there is no point in anyone staying here,” he added.

Osbourne smiled at Burgess as he put out his hand to introduce himself, adding, “I would like to work with you on the AI, if you don’t mind. I have a particular interest in that field myself.” He led Burgess off to the control room at the front of the spaceship.

Goeth walked over to the other scientists and a discussion followed over the transfer of their experiments and research, much of which had disappeared with the consumption of the mainframe by the killer nanites. There was a lot of hand-wringing and anger, but pretty much everyone was relieved to be moving out of the shadow of the Fortress and Ferris’ fearsome tempers.

Within the hour, Medusa, as the ship was now called, was on its way with a large contingent of the local population of workers. It would be some time before all of the assets and equipment were removed and they still had to deal with the African Fortress complex as well as the Asian Space-port which somehow needed to be kept operational. There was much to do and Garner was exhausted by the end of the first week of reorganising everything.

Zeke was still in space, debugging the Marauder, and would have to be apprised of the situation before too long. Garner expected that to be the clincher in pulling Zeke fully back into the programme to get them into space. Yes, things were moving along well.

Whilst everyone was pleased with the outcome, not everyone was welcomed to Space Island. The friction between the two groups of scientists was evident from the outset and Osbourne had a major job settling the personalities involved.

Much to his private relief, Dr. Goeth came out fully in support of him. Despite Goeth’s motivation being borne of self-interest, Osbourne nonetheless accepted the man’s help in integrating the teams. Slowly they began to share their work and results.

It wasn’t long before the research began racing ahead. Driven by the competitive natures of talented individuals, the scientists, realising that skills lacking on both sides had previously held them back, now found that solutions seemed relatively easy to find and implement.

Pennington took in the security and military personnel from all of Fortress’ bases without having to concern himself over divided loyalties, because there was no longer a question of choice. He doubled his command over the weeks and quietly took control. He weeded out personnel that were not suitable material and promoted the ones that fitted in well. The bases ran like well-oiled machines as slowly, the different organisations integrated.

The base in the Far East he kept as a military space-port because its set-up was already covert and suited as a military camp . Only a few people knew it existed and its location was deemed ideal to use for a build up of the growing number of military ships and fighters.

Using the existing gunship designs created by the Fortress, but wisely adding in human security personnel to manage the on-board AIs, they soon had a large force of over forty atmosphere-based security cruisers and for the first time the logo of the SCSS was seen in places other than Space Island.

Many of the countries represented on the Space Council noticed the absence of the military headquarters on Space Island and whilst most of the members were ambivalent about their departure, some were either concerned that the Island was unprotected, or worse that the SC had effectively lost over-watch of their behaviour. Garner himself had such concerns, but trusted his friend, Pennington. He also understood more than any other, the urgent need to expand the Space Force beyond a simple glorified policing organisation.

Now Osbourne, Lang and the newly unified team were working flat out without animosity and with tremendous productivity. The software compression issues were resolved and the new multi-purpose nanites were becoming mainstream, but only for the production of military ships, weapons and ancillary equipment.

The technology was too volatile for general use as yet. Until more was known of the long-term risks of allowing the programmable nanite technology loose on the world, it would not be commercially developed. It was massively disruptive technology in the hands of unscrupulous manufacturers, or weapons developers it could wreak havoc.

The inhabitants of Earth were already reeling under the social changes wrought by the technology released by Zirkos and the Fortress. Another radical technological advance at this point might just be enough to send the commercial and social structure of the planet spiralling into an economic chaos. They needed a safe and secure population at the moment, not one in cataclysmic meltdown.

It had only been two short weeks ago that the Fortress and Space Island battle for global supremacy had been resolved. Progress since had been nothing short of miraculous. Garner was constantly amazed at how quickly ships took shape from his window. It almost seemed like overnight there was a new ship in his view; sizes and types varied now as their production speeded up.

They had developed large commercial transit vessels that could double up as spaceships when the need arose, but their main thrust was in small, hyper-fast Marauder dual air and space fighter craft that carried the SCSS emblem on the side. These disappeared into service almost as soon as they came off the production line so nobody really noticed how many of them actually got built.

Garner knew that between the island and the eastern military production facilities, they had a fleet of almost a hundred of them already flying, prepared for when Zeke got back and space training could begin.

- 17 -

Pod’s quiet departure from Earth had gone unnoticed. It returned to space to resume its tireless work in defence of the planet below. This meant its own projects now took up all its processors attention. As it hovered inside the empty asteroid, the centre of its small universe, it continued to develop new technology from the patterns in its archive.

In designing and building weapons and monitoring systems, it was deliberately incorporating the scientific and technological progress made by Osbourne’s teams into its own developments. It logically reasoned that whatever it built, the humans had to be able to modify, and later improve, the designs using their own existing technology base.

Pod and Osbourne had discussed this approach at length in his lab. Pod thought it was logical to give humans the ability to leapfrog from one level to the next provided they could see and understand the technology. It was pointless giving them inventions that they had no ability to comprehend. It was a dangerous prescription and Zirkos had cautioned the two AI’s on such a danger well before he disappeared. Pod felt there was justification for maintaining this approach so ignored all of the esoteric designs that would be so far advanced they would appear to be magic to the humans.

Pod was constructing a sentinel, intending to place them at the extreme ends of the planetary approach. It was concentrating on slowing down the Nubl, giving Earth time to hide under the shield domes. It had grave doubts they would survive a full hive onslaught if the Nubl brought their formidable weapons to bear on them. Pod hoped to weaken them if at all possible.

By its galaxy mapping and its understanding of interstellar routes and where they were likely to intersect with the system, Pod was able to station devices around the outer planets, and amongst the asteroid belts where they could hide.

Pod also analysed the probability that the Nubl could detect the Jenari cloaking devices, so instead used the Fortress’ cloaking technology as modified by Osbourne. It worked extremely well in space where there was little to refract the limited light available. Pod hoped this would deflect the sensors of the Nubl.

These were not sophisticated devices in themselves, quite the opposite. They had two functions. Firstly, to warn Earth of attack, and secondly to expend themselves in creating a diversionary delay. As such, they contained an armed barrage of tiny, but extremely deadly missiles.

Pod had quickly realised the value of the killer nanites as a weapon and worked out a way of containing them safely. As Pod was of artificial construction, these nanites were an anathema to its whole fabric of being. The very concept of unleashing them on an unsuspecting enemy ship made Pod’s processors cool rapidly in an electronic funk, the closest it could come to showing human nervousness.

These nanites were not discriminating in their choice of menu, any ship would do, which made them a high-risk deterrent. So, Pod first had to rebuild its own core shell using a mixture of glass, porcelain and various other natural defensive substances it had tested against the nanites. It now had immunity, of sorts - so long as they didn’t get past Pod’s initial shell.

The inactive killer nanites were set into glass vials designed to separate from the tiny anti-matter drives that would thrust them at an enemy ship at high velocity. These vials had harmonics built into the tops that would allow them to slip through the shields at a slow enough pace not to trip the alarm systems, a lesson the Nubl had taught them millennia ago with their anti-matter missiles.

Osbourne had designed the nanites with timers which could be set and activated when needed. Pod had very little modification to do to ensure they would meet its needs. On a single charge they could go for weeks on standby, Pod built in a pulse charger that would flash the vials once every set period. They would remain in place for months, or longer if required.

When fired, the missiles were designed to aim themselves at their quarry and achieve optimum speed, which, for the attack to work, was inordinately slow in space warfare terms. They would then disperse the vials on a vectored path before appearing to fizzle out and go off at an angle as if suffering from a misfire, or design failure.

The destruction of the enemy ship would not be immediate, but by the time their ships reached Earth, they would be suffering from the effects of the nanite erosion. This would hopefully cut short their visit, or at least impede their attack on Earth.

The nanites themselves would not activate until launch and were set with a life of two hours, this being Pod’s estimated time of transit from arrival in system to planet side Earth. They would then self destruct using whatever power that remained in the fuel cells to combust, thus ensuring subsequent ‘clean-up’ operations would not be infected.

The sensors also carried small anti-matter missiles to supplement the vials of killer-nanites. These were deliberately designed to mimic the Nubl’s own missiles which should fool the Nubl while their A.I.s assimilated the likelihood of another hive being present in the system. This would delay them just long enough to give precious seconds of flight time for the vials. The missile battery was only small so couldn’t take out a ship unless unshielded. The hesitation would give the killer nanites a chance to slip through defences while distracted by the AMM’s.

Pod was satisfied with the design and the technology it had utilised in the defensive shields. It had high hopes that the sensor drones might be captured at which point there were a series of fail-safes to ensure the ejection of all of the nanites in an enclosed area. If the Nubl happened to be anywhere in the vicinity, it would be a very satisfactory outcome. Pod's robots proceeded to build thousands of them. Some were for immediate distribution, others would be held back for later use.

Lastly, Pod mapped their locations very carefully. Instructions would be sent to Earth for their ships to broadcast a signal enabling the sensors to ignore friendly craft, when Earth had some ready to enter space. It set a task to activate on reaching Earth's proximity to beam details of the sensors to Osbourne, as well as a warning to avoid those locations.

Pod felt it had done enough to make a start. It had created an off-world sanctuary which would quickly turn into a military base if the Nubl arrived and doubled up as a ship building yard, currently run by its robots building A.I. marauders that Pod could control remotely.