Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax (19 page)

“You’re just now asking that question?  Is this the first you ever thought about that?”  I asked.

“Well, no!  I mean I’ve thought about it at times, but it's only been recently that I realized I’ve never seen anyone like him and no one I know ever has.”

“I’m sorry I can’t answer your question.  You’re not the only one asking it, and to be honest, I don’t know anyone who has the answer other than A’Lappe.”

“I’ve heard the Brotherhood is offering a huge reward to anyone who captures him and turns him over to them.  What do you think they know about him that we don’t?”

“Well I wouldn’t say we don’t know that answer,” I responded, “I think they know that A’Lappe is our greatest weapon against them.  All our technical strides we’ve made that give us an advantage over the Brotherhood have come from, or involved A’Lappe.  The 10X reactors, the solbidnite, the Deep-Space Communication device; he is instrumental for the development of the Cantolla Gates along with Cantolla.  He developed the system that improved the speed of our ships, and developed the personal cloaking devices.  I imagine that they would love to be able to have A’Lappe developing new technologies for them, and I dread thinking what this war would be like if A’Lappe were on their side.”

“Hmm, I see your point,” Marranalis replied, “I wonder just where he is from and why no one has ever seen any others of his race.  Maybe he’s a time traveler.”

“Has anyone discovered time travel?”  I asked.  It had never occurred to me that time travel might have actually been discovered in the Federation.

“Not that I know of,” Marranalis replied, “but I did hear Cantolla talking to one of her assistants one day and saying that she believed it was possible.”

I debated telling Marranalis that Cantolla also had her questions about A’Lappe’s origin, but I decided not to.  I knew that A’Lappe wasn’t from the same universe or dimension as we were, but I’d promised him I would not reveal his secret.  I did wonder though if there were members of the Brotherhood who knew the truth about A’Lappe’s origin and if that didn’t play a part in them wanting him so badly.

I was about to go back to the
NEW ORLEANS
when Admiral Wabussie entered the War Room.  “There you are, Tibby.  I was hoping to find you here,” he said.

“I was just getting an update from Marranalis,” I replied.

“I thought you might like an update on the sound-recording fungus back at the Capitol.  We’ve been watching for weeks now hoping to find the person who planted the stuff and catch them trying to retrieve the data, only no one's appeared.  Then, last night we spotted this on our cameras,” Wabussie said as he inserted a chip in the vid screen.  A scene appeared on the screen showing the inside of an office.  “If you look right here,” Wabussie said as he pointed to the screen, "you will see the location of the fungus.  Now watch.”  A few seconds went by before he said, “there--did you see it?”

“Ah, no, “I answered, “I didn’t see anything.”

“Here, let me replay it.  Try not to blink, or you could miss it,” Wabussie said as he replayed the sequence.  Everything looked the same, only this time I noticed a small flash of a thin beam of light that lasted just a fraction of a second.  “There!  Did you see it that time?” he asked.

“The flash of light?” I asked.

“Yes, the flash of light.  Now watch as I play the same scene from another camera in the room looking at the direction the light came from,” Wabussie said.

Once again, we were looking at a view of the room that seemed still, then the door opened and a floor cleaning robot entered the room.  It was a small unit about 600mm long by 300mm wide and 400 mm tall.  There was a thin beam of light that flashed out of the robot hitting the fungus.  The robot went into the room cleaning the floor in its typical pattern and then left the room.

“This is how they have been doing it,” Wabussie said.  The floor cleaning robots activate the fungus’ playback while they are cleaning the rooms.  To anyone watching on a security camera, everything looks normal as the robot goes about its tasks, but all the while it’s in the room, it’s recording the sounds being played back by the fungus.”

“But how did they get the fungus in the rooms to begin with?”  I asked.

“Once we saw this and figured it out, we intercepted one of the robots and examined it.  Each robot is equipped with a bottle of cleaning solution that can be sprayed, using a directional spray nozzle, to stubborn floor stains for cleaning.  Only in this case, the bottles are filled with a solution containing spores from the fungus.  The robot directs the nozzle to a location where they want the fungus located, and it sprays the spores there and they grow.  Then a week later the cleaning robots activate the fungus daily to play back any sounds they picked up.  The ingenious part of this is that no person ever enters the room to plant the fungus, or to retrieve the recording.  It all takes place as part of a normal cleaning operation.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “Wasn’t it the cleaning people who first noticed and reported the fungus?  If it’s the cleaning crew doing this, why would they report themselves?  This doesn’t make sense.”

“Again, that’s the beauty of all of this.  The cleaning crew knew nothing about what was going on.  All they do is activate the machines, and then they go about other chores while the robots clean the floors.  The cleaning crew doesn’t own the machines. They rent them from another company.”

“So it’s the other company that is responsible for the spying and the fungus?” I asked.

“We’re not sure.  We’re still using the fungus to pass on false information to the Brotherhood, and we don’t want to ruin that.  We’re thinking that it may not be the other company, but rather one or two employees there who are using the cleaning robots without the company knowing about it.  Right now, we are trying to find a way to get an FSO operative inside the company with the hopes we can discover who is doing this and who all is involved.”

“Are you and Admiral Regeny still staging meetings to provide the Brotherhood with false information?”  I asked.

“We try to have at least one discussion each day in hot areas that either provide useless information or bad information,” he said.

“Let’s see if we can shake them up a bit.  I’d like you and the Admiral to start hinting that we have rumors of the whereabouts of Roritat, and we have assassins headed to his location to try to take him out,” I said.

Wabussie raised an eyebrow questioningly, “what are you trying to accomplish?”

“Making the enemy uncomfortable for one and hopefully getting Roritat to move to someplace where we actually can find him.  I’m hoping the rumor will flush him out into the open.”

“Why him and not Ming?”

“Ming is on the move constantly aboard one of the starships the Brotherhood took, and most assuredly one with a working RMFF.  Ming feels safest there and the only reason he would leave would be for some place he believed safer and better protected.  By the way, what is the latest news you have on Roritat?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.  We were starting to wonder if he was alive but since analyzing the data we’ve taken on Windsor, we’ve seen some communication from him that indicates he’s still alive.  However, it looks like he’s letting Ming pretty much run things.  We think he might be undergoing surgery again to change his identity.”

“You don’t think he will try to assume the identity of one of the leaders again?”  I asked, somewhat in surprise.

“I doubt it.  Most likely though it will be someone with influential power, and probably someone who will spread a message that is demeaning to the Federation.”

I spoke a few minutes more with Wabussie before excusing myself and heading back to the
NEW ORLEANS
to meet with A’Lappe.  I went into the lab and found him bent over some experiment like he usually was.

“A’Lappe, Marranalis tells me you wished to see me about something,” I said.

“Ah Tibby, yes indeed.  I think you will be very interested in this.  Come over here and let me show you,” he said as he led me across the lab to where he had some equipment set up.  “Here, take this rod and try and touch that ball at the end of that pole,” he said pointing to a 300 millimeter diameter ball mounted upon a pole protruding from a piece of equipment.  I took the pole and extended it toward the ball, but it stopped short of the ball and I could not get the rod any closer no matter how hard I tried.

“So it’s a force field,” I said, “How is it different from the RMFF we currently use?”

“It’s not.  It’s the same as the one we use.  Here, now try it using this rod,” he said as he handed me another rod with a small knob at the end, the other end of the rod was attached to a power cord and connected to another set of equipment.  I took the rod and move it toward the ball.  I felt a slight resistance, but I could touch the ball with the rod without much difficulty.

“What did you do?”  I ask.  “Did you reduce the power on the shield?”

“No, not at all.  The tip of the rod you are holding generates its own RMFF.  We never tried to find out what happened if two reverse magnetic force fields were to come into contact.  I got thinking about it, and I discovered that if they were close to the same power level that they neutralized each other,” he said excitedly.

“So if we touch an RMFF field to another RMFF field, our ships would be able to inflict damage on the ship.”

A’Lappe’s countenance dropped a little as he said, “It doesn’t neutralize the entire shield, Tibby.  It only weakens it in a localized area.  However, if you have torpedoes equipped with RMFF generating tips like the rod you are holding, they would be able to penetrate the RMFF shield and hit the enemy ship.”

“How difficult will it be to make torpedoes with RMFF’s?” I asked.

“I’m working on that now, I don’t think it will be too hard, but it will require using solbidnite that could otherwise be used to generate power for some planet or ship.  In other words, it takes a lot of power.”

“I see,” I said as I weighed the value of damaging an RMFF protected ship against supplying the power needs for a planet.  “We wouldn’t need a lot of them if we used them right.  I’m not sure how many RMFF equipped ships the enemy has, but it can’t be that many.  I would think if we had 100 very powerful torpedoes with RMFF generators, and we could hit the hangars on enemy starships with them, we could disable their ships enough that we could then take them out using conventional missiles, torpedoes and lasers.  See what you can come up with.  Make the torpedoes powerful enough to take out the entire hangar on a starship.”

“I have something else I wanted to tell you,” A’Lappe said.  “I’ve figured out a way to coordinate the RMFF shields so that a ship can be launched with the shields up, and just as the ship reached the shield, a computer synchronizes the ship and the shield causing the shield to flicker momentarily long enough for it to pass through.  I wouldn’t recommend you use this if you are under heavy fire, but it could be used under weak fire conditions if needed.”

“I can see where that might be useful.  Great idea, A’Lappe.”

“I’m glad you like it, Tibby.  I was hoping you would.”

“By the way,” I said changing the topic, “I was talking to Wabussie earlier about the latest developments in the
Ginuluvti-Neusser-rufous
case.  I think you should talk to him about their newest findings. They’ve discovered how the enemy is planting the fungus and retrieving the recorded data.”

“I’m assuming they are doing it remotely using some sort of mechanical device,” A’Lappe replied.  His response startled me.

“How long have you known that?”  I asked.

“From the first day you showed me the fungus.  I’ve just not been able to figure out what device they might use that would be undetected.  What is it?”

“A robotic floor cleaner modified so the spray cleaner is directional and shoots a solution with the fungus spores on the surface they want it growing on.  The modifications are so innocuous in appearance that no one gave them any attention.  Even the cleaning staff never noticed.”

“So the cleaning staff is not involved in the spying,” A’Lappe said, “Ingenious.”

“The cleaning devices are rented from, and supplied by, an outside vendor who never even enters the Capitol.  The vendor gets the machines back once a month for servicing, at which time they retrieve all data from the units.  At least, that’s what we surmise," I replied.

“And the Brotherhood runs the servicing company?”  A’Lappe asked.

“The FSO doesn’t think so.  They believe it’s a single, or pair of operatives working within the robotic cleaner company that have specifically modified these units, and they are operating outside of the cognizance of the company.  The FSO is planting an operative in the company to find out and discover who the person, or persons are that have been doing this.  Wabussie can give you all the details.”

The next few days went by quickly as I dealt with details of the capture of Windsor.  Troops were transferred from other planets using the Cantolla Gates to Windsor, setting up strong defensive positions in case the Brotherhood returned and tried to retake the planet.  A large number of slave prisoners, forced into service of the Brotherhood, were found in several locations around the planet and set free, and the Federation troopers were well received and celebrated for liberating them.  Even though the planet was not part of the Federation, funds and services were made available to assist them in rebuilding their society and improving their lives.  Almost all the money for this came out of large stashes of currency and credits found in the Brotherhood base.  Vast fields of the planet, once used to produce the plant for God’s Sweat, were converted to producing agricultural crops for the inhabitants of Windsor and for export to other worlds.