The Commander (4 page)

Luke gave Annie a moment to adjust while they stood in the center of the Moonbase hangar. He wondered if he’d had the same look yesterday.

During the thirty-minute flight to the moon he briefly explained what he’d learned from Sam. She didn’t argue with him, just looked at everything with an awed expression. Luke knew how she felt.

After they touched down inside the hangar
Sadie
opened a panel on the side console and instructed Luke to take the enclosed earpiece. It was identical to the one Sam had given him. “Take her to the training room before you give her that,”
Sadie
recommended.

A quick tour through the Moonbase ended at the training room. Luke felt uncomfortable for what was about to follow.

“Annie, I’m going to introduce you to George. He’s a computer that runs the place for us. George, this is Annie Daniels. She’s our…uh…new finance director.”

“Have you given her the translation device?” George asked.

“Not yet,” Luke replied.

“Not yet, what?” Annie asked. “What was that voice?”

Luke handed her the earpiece. “That was George. This might hurt a little, but after you put this in your ear you’ll be able to understand what George is saying.”

“Like a universal translator? Like on
Star Trek
?” She looked eager.

“Yeah. Kind of like that.”

“Okay.” Without hesitation Annie took the device and stuck it into her ear.

Luke winced, feeling guilty. The pain he’d been hit with yesterday was no joke.

After a few seconds she smiled. “Whoa! That was weird. I can’t even feel it now.”

“Really?” Luke was glad but astonished. “That’s it? It didn’t hurt even a little?” It didn’t seem quite fair that his transition was so painful.

“Nope, not at all.”

“George, why was that?” Luke asked the ceiling.

“Miss Daniels experienced a normal transition, Commander.
Sadie
had the opportunity to examine her more closely during the flight here. Accordingly, she was able to adapt the device more specifically to her needs.”

“Is that George?” Annie asked excitedly. “He’s the one you were talking about?”

Luke nodded. “That’s right.”

“Hi, George. I’m Annie Daniels. Nice to meet you.”

“My pleasure Miss Daniels. Welcome to Moonbase One.”

“Thank you, George. Please call me Annie. So you gave Mr. Blackburn all that gold?”

“Indirectly, that’s true. Sam was the one that provided it, locally. But it was my determination that bullion is a suitable currency in your culture.”

Annie threw Luke a tentative glance. “Yeah, bit of a problem the way you did it, but I think I can sort it out; now that I know what’s going on.”

“Seriously?” Luke asked. “So, I take it you’re in?”

Annie smiled, brimming with excitement. “Are you kidding? This is a whole lot cooler than working with those guys at Royal Deutsche. Why does George call you Commander?”

“I’m kind of afraid to ask. He started that once Sam left.”

“George?” Annie asked. “What’s up?”

“Annie, Commander Blackburn is the senior military officer for Earth’s Planetary Defense Force. His mission is to develop space travel for your people, establish ties with potential allies in this part of the galaxy, build a suitable force to meet the alien invasion, and then engage and defeat that enemy.”

“Cool.” Annie looked at Luke expectantly. “So, what’s next?”

Luke was astounded by her unruffled acceptance of the situation. Was it the naïveté of youth or an incredibly adaptable mind? It didn’t matter. At least he had a partner.

“I need money I can spend,” he answered.

“I can handle that. It’ll take a few weeks. I think it would be smart if you have a corporate structure; easier to keep it legal. There’ll be a lot of paperwork to create the necessary shell companies. I assume you want me to handle the details?”

“Absolutely. It’s your baby. Do whatever you need and keep me in the loop.”

# # #

Two months later Luke sat behind his office desk and watched Annie disembark the chartered Gulfstream 450. She thanked the crew and walked toward the airport terminal. She looked a lot different these days, at least outwardly. The running outfit was gone; in its place was something chic from Burberry.

In the past few weeks she had worked wonders. The first day following their trip to the moon she had Luke load twenty of the gold bars onto the floorboard in the back seat of his pickup.

“JP Morgan in Seattle has a concierge banking service for all the dot.com millionaires,” she explained. “They’re used to dealing with newly-rich young people. These bars will establish my credentials. After that, they’ll take care of the rest.” She covered the bars with a blanket, took his pickup key and drove off.

She was right. As she explained on her return, “When you put five hundred pounds of gold on a banker’s desk, they get interested
really
fast.” Once their account was opened, Annie visited the Seattle branch of the law firm Hawley, Hepworth & Kidwell. By the time she got back from her first trip, she had created a new corporate entity, Professional Design Engineering Firm, LLC. She even had a logo created. It was a blue globe on a black background overlaid with a hand grasping several drawing pencils. The corporate name was inscribed below the globe. The acronym, PDEF, was printed across the top.

“This is just subterfuge, though,” she explained. “The parent company is the real PDEF. Here’s that logo.” It was the same graphic except the hand had been replaced by a mailed fist grasping bright yellow lightning bolts. The name at the bottom was Planetary Defense, Inc.

“Remember?” she asked. “George said you were the commander for Earth’s planetary defense.” She laughed delightedly at his approval of her ideas.

While Annie was arranging their finances, Luke spent his time on two tasks. The first was fairly ridiculous. He visited every restaurant in Reno and Las Vegas, both plain and fancy, and ordered everything on their menus. He told the various food service employees that he was photographing all the dishes for a glossy new publication. The waiters didn’t really care; he tipped well so they were satisfied.

In reality, Luke was using the hand-scanner from Sam to add each menu item to the replicator database.

Although he felt absurd going about the task, he knew that failing to provide appetizing meals would be cause for mutiny. He had eaten enough MREs over the years to understand that a varied and pleasing cuisine was crucial for the long-term satisfaction of remotely stationed employees. By the time he finished, the moon’s replicator food menu was more than respectable.

When not visiting restaurants, he worked with a marketing agency in Seattle to develop a corporate website for PDEF, complete with photos of Moonbase’s residential accommodations and stock images of smiling, happy families. The website described exciting research projects with descriptive language like
for the good of all mankind
, and
career growth opportunities
. It never revealed the location of such supposed labs. Instead the advertisements admitted that it was in a remote and harsh environment. The layout contained several outdoor, snow-covered landscapes, deceptively hinting that the Antarctic was the likely location.

Annie looked exhausted when she walked into the office. “It’s all done,” she announced. “PDEF has a net worth of two billion dollars. Lots of unasked questions but bankers at this level are used to keeping things discreet.”

“Good job,” Luke replied. “I know you’d like some rest but are you ready for some grunt work? It’s a little more basic than all the high finance you’ve been doing.”

“As long as I don’t have to wear this business suit anymore, I’m in.”

Her new task was purchasing. The hand-scanner worked fine for food, but not for complex hard goods. Luke wanted her to buy one of everything necessary to supply the Moonbase and then transport the goods to where George had sophisticated scanning tools. Once scanned, each item would be permanently available in the replicator inventory.

Luke’s plan was to furnish several of the living quarters to function as model homes. It would give the soon-to-be residents a head start in creating their new lives on the moon.

“Can you take care of this for me?” Luke asked.

“You kidding? You’re asking a woman if she has a problem with shopping? I will handle this. What’s
your
next project?”

“We need a chief of operations for Moonbase. Before we begin recruiting large numbers of people, we have to have someone who can keep everything running. My last boss was a colonel in the air force. Doctor Roth Higgins; he has a PhD in physics. He always thought of himself as a scientist. I felt the military was something he did to stay around leading-edge tech. Last I heard he was working at UNLV. I bet he would be open to what we have to offer.”

“Sounds like the guy.”

“He’s gotta be in his sixties, though. I’m hoping he still has some of the adventurous spirit that some of the old service guys have.”

“Like you?”

Luke chuckled at the thought. “Not at all. The only thing I want is a small office with no responsibility. Then I can hang out and have a beer now and then.”

“Is that what you call what we’re working on, saving mankind from a massive alien invasion?”

“Well, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I don’t really see me becoming some kind of interstellar warlord. If we can just get this thing working, it should take on a life of its own.”

Annie shook her head skeptically. “So when are you leaving?”

“Next Monday. I called and got an appointment with him. I’ll go down on the Gulfstream.”

Annie glanced out the window at the luxury aircraft sitting on the tarmac. The pilot was walking around the jet, giving it a visual inspection before taking off once again. “I could get really spoiled flying on that thing,” she admitted.

“More so than with
Sadie
?”

“
Sadie
won’t let me drink alcohol.
They
give me wine coolers.”

“She probably thinks you’re too young for booze.”

“Oh, right. Should I start calling you Grandfather?”

Luke smiled at his young colleague. He did think of her as a youngster and hoped he hadn’t made it too obvious. “If this works out, I’ll be back the same day.”

# # #

Luke was surprised by how much Roth had aged. He seemed a bit smaller than Luke remembered. His hair was thinner now and had gone completely white. But his eyes were bright as ever and the friendly smile was just as broad. Books were stacked everywhere around his office. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases behind Roth’s desk were stuffed with manuscripts, thick tomes, and documents of all kinds. One side of the small room was paneled with four-by-eight-foot dry erase boards filled with colorful notes and diagrams.

“I like your place here, Colonel,” Luke said affably, admiring the academic’s office. He sat across from his old mentor. In their first assignment together, Roth had been Luke’s instructor pilot.

“Thanks, Luke. But nobody calls me colonel anymore, and frankly, I prefer it that way.”

“So what do they call you? Professor? Doctor Higgins?”

“The students feel obligated to use
Doctor
. But why don’t you and I stick with Roth? So what brings you here? Just passing through or did you get hit by a wave of nostalgia? I wouldn’t have thought that of you.”

Luke shrugged as if uncertain how to start.
Might as well plunge right in.
“Frankly, it’s a job opportunity.”

“Oh? Okay.” Roth nodded. “You need a recommendation or something? That’s not a problem.”

Luke smiled at the misconception. “No, but I appreciate the thought. I meant this is an opportunity for
you
. It’s science oriented. I guess you could say it involves space science. I’d like to show it to you today, if you have time.”

Roth was surprised. “For me? No. Thanks anyway, Luke. I’m perfectly comfortable here. My schedule is accommodating and on weekends I’ve got a fishing boat I can take out to Lake Mead. I’m not interested in starting a new career.”

“Understood. I figured that’s what you’d say. I felt exactly the same until recently. This gig was sort of pushed into my lap. Before this I was the airport director up in Baggs. You know Baggs?”

“Couple of hours east of Reno, isn’t it? You drive down here to see me?”

“That’s it. Small town. But I didn’t drive. I came down here in a Gulfstream 450. Helps take the sting out of travel.”

Roth smiled and sat back in his chair. “You trying to suck me in? I’ve been in executive jets before.”

Luke grinned and leaned forward, his elbows on Roth’s desk. “Yeah, I know. You used to fly around on those tiny Citations with some two-star. But not like this one. This is beyond first class. Come on. At least let me show off a little. I’ll have you back here tonight; I promise.”