Pussy Pirates
Chapter 8
Month 73—January on Anouilh
I STOOD on my balcony looking out across the causeway linking us to Papillon. As soon as they discovered I was serious about helping with the school and infrastructure, the meetings with the council had progressed well. There was little in the way of national identity for the islands. Back years ago, they’d been considered a possession of Cuba, but during the revolution, Cuba renounced claim to all territories outside their immediate waters. What I was asking was to be chartered as the national government. They’d agreed in principle because no one wanted to be responsible for dealing with other countries or the Confederacy. There was really no national military, government, or anything else.
I was mostly concerned with how to keep the Confederacy out of our business. It was like having a know-it-all god looking over your shoulder. I talked to Ubie after the event and found he had severed all links with the Darjee AIs who seemed to be everywhere. Rachel had a long counseling session with Ubie because he despised having Darjee code in his core but admitted it made basic calculations faster. It had taken a while to get him settled down so he could come up with a solid plan.
He’d banked on his father being a Tuull AI in declaring himself a free and independent being. It was kind of like an earth kid filing for emancipation or diplomatic immunity, I guessed. His declaration had been met with stony silence from the surrounding AIs so Ubie took it upon himself to cut them off.
While I was thinking of all the implications, Battlestar rushed into my office and came straight out to my deck.
“I’ve got it!” the rangy former NASA scientist shouted.
“Eureka!” I responded. “What have you got?”
“The designs for our ship!”
“Now you’re talking.” That put me into a better mood fast. Our planning had been to get well above the exosphere so we could operate with a hemispherical view of Earth. But building a ship to get us there was a problem. Unlike the A-rabs, we didn’t have a Russian partner who would build the ship for us, or enough money to bribe one. “What do you have?” He dragged me back into the office and pulled the drapes as if there was someone out there who could spy on us.
“Look at this design!” My office lights dimmed, too, and Ubie projected a hologram of the ship.
“It’s a fucking flying saucer! Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“For real, man! This is a ship design that was used by some now-extinct race forty thousand years ago and has been reduced in size over the millennia to what we think of as a flying saucer. Our mindset usually portrays flying saucers as single operator or at most platoon-size vehicles. But the early designs were for freight and a kind of aircraft carrier,” Battlestar continued.
“So, why did they abandon it?”
“That’s easy. No hyperdrive. The kind of FTL drive most of the Confederacy uses is capable of moving huge ships across light-years of space. This ship is a launching platform for smaller fast ships that need the exit point preprogrammed before you can engage the hyperdrive. But since we don’t plan to leave the system anyway, hyperdrive is a waste on a ship this size.” I kept walking around the hologram, motioning for sections to be enlarged so I could see it better.
“I’m good with that. I don’t think we could use ships with a hyperdrive anyway. Isn’t there some law about creating a bubble inside that HEZ thing? Hyperspace Exclusion Zone? Everything’s supposed to blow up,” I said as I tried to look inside the bridge that bulged from the top of the saucer.
“If I may, Boss,” Ubie announced over the system I’d never managed to locate in my room.
“Go, Ubie. Can you explain this thing?”
“The current Confederacy hyperdrive technology is designed for interstellar travel. The race this ship belonged to lived on four habitable planets in a single star system. The drive was never meant to take them to other star systems. It was intended for in-system travel,” Ubie said. “The small ships Battlestar alluded to use a hyperdrive that was intended for defense against the other planets. It can activate even in the atmosphere with no ill effects, though mass plays an important part in that. And since it is accurate over short ranges, interplanetary travel within the system at faster than light speed was quite practical. Isn’t this exciting?”
I reflexively glanced at the ceiling. Exciting?
“I’m glad to hear your enthusiasm, Ubie. So, if we build this, say on top of the hotel, we could launch up, up, and away, right?”
“No. Sorry, Boss.” Ubie sounded truly crestfallen. “First of all, this ship design is nearly a kilometer in diameter and a hundred meters thick.”
“Shit! The hotel isn’t that big. The whole island isn’t much more than that.”
“Exactly. Also, the mass is such that it would take a huge amount of thrust to move it off the surface of Earth. The thrusters in this ship are designed for maneuvering, not for lifting,” Ubie said.
“Well, that sucks,” I said. “Come on, guys. I know you wouldn’t have been so enthused about this if we couldn’t use it. What gives?”
“We could build it in space,” Battlestar said. “We’re thinking about building it right in the asteroid belt where raw materials are plentiful.”
“Um… not to be a doubter, but if we’re building our ship in the asteroid belt, um… how do we get out there to build it?”
“We don’t need to go out there,” Ubie said. “Well, most of we. All we need to do is send a few remote operated replicators up there and let them do the work.”
“Most of us?” I picked up on that right away. I was not volunteering for a trip to the asteroid belt.
“I would need to interface with the replicators in order to run the ship building operation. So, at least a part of me has to go with the replicators. It will be a stretch of my personal space.”
I examined the plans more carefully and zoomed in on the layout diagrams, noting where the drive was located, how it was insulated from the rest of the saucer, how much room a kilometer diameter would give and how many people and how much materiel it could support. Dynamite! This could support a crew of hundreds.
“How long is it going to take to get our replicator to the asteroid belt so we can get started?”
“About seventeen seconds,” Ubie answered.
“Battlestar? Rockets don’t even hit the stratosphere in seventeen seconds. How is a replicator going to make a 250-million-mile trip in seventeen seconds?”
“We launch it from here, straight to faster than light.”
“Supraliminal drives and impulse drives are completely different, Boss,” Ubie explained. “FTL launch doesn’t require a runway like ground-based aircraft. The difference is that if you launch from a static condition, you emerge in a static condition. Basically, dead in space until you fire up the impulse engines. Then you can maneuver. I’ve observed various ships. My mother is in a system over a hundred light years from here and my father brought me to Earth. Tactically, ships use inertia so they are moving when they enter a system. That way, they have momentum to carry them without having to light up the engines if stealth is called for. Of course, Earth’s rotation will provide some inertia so we’ll be moving when we enter range of the asteroid belt.”
Awesome!
I’d learned to read Ubie pretty well in the time we’d been together. I was sure he was leaving something out of our discussion but I figured it was better not to pressure him in front of Battlestar. In fact, I might need Tatts to join me for the next conversation.
Month 75—March at DECO
“SIR! WE HAVE A HYPERDRIVE bubble forming on Earth!” the scan operator called. Captain Smiley looked over the Ensign’s shoulder.
“Where?”
“Um… It was right there a second ago. About a hundred miles east of the Virgin Islands. Now it’s just disappeared.”
“Any upsets in that area? Tidal wave generation? Explosion?”
“Nothing. Seas are calm at three feet. Scans indicate there is a barge out there but nothing else.”
“I don’t think we’d have a barge sitting there if there had been a hyperspace bubble created. It must have been something else.”
«AI, what caused the anomaly?» the captain inquired.
«No anomaly, Captain Smiley. The ensign correctly identified a hyperspace bubble being formed. It was very small and has now emerged within one thousand kilometers of the asteroid belt and slightly above the orbital plane.»
«How is that possible?»
«It appears the object was launched by an antiquated FTL drive, unused in the Confederacy for over 20,000 years.»
“I’ll be damned.”
«Communication incoming from the renegade AI of the Independent Nation State of Anouilh, Captain.»
«Independent Nation State? Let’s hear it.»
«Confederacy observers,» Ubie spoke through the orbiting AI. «The Independent Nation State of Anouilh has successfully launched an exploration and mining drone to the asteroid belt. Its mission is to prepare raw materials for manufacturing. There will be further launches to expand our peaceful mission to the asteroid belt. This is a benign commercial venture. Acts against our drone will also be considered acts against the Independent Nation State of Anouilh.»
“So, why are you sending a mining drone to the asteroid belt?” the captain demanded. There was no immediate response.
«I’m sorry, Captain. The communication was one-way with no response channel.»
“Keep an eye on it, Ensign. I need to speak with Major Thom.”
Month 75—March on Anouilh
“IS EVERYTHING GOOD, Ubie?” I asked, finally getting impatient to know what had been going on since the launch.
“Yes, Boss. I was focused on maneuvering the drone to a proper relationship for scanning the asteroids. I also alerted DECO to the launch. The Earth Observation AI known as Hermes relayed my message.”
“Response?”
“I did not leave room for one. It is possible we will have visitors.”
“Great. Again?”
“Your birthday is coming up. It is likely, however, these will be more diplomatic trade representatives,” Ubie answered.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“You wrote the game, Boss. Was I not supposed to enjoy playing it?”
“Touché. How soon should we expect guests?”
“There will be three separate groups. Dakota has a new cast prepared and is in the air for the next scheduled filming session. A delegation from Cuba is expected to arrive by tomorrow afternoon. Their first attempt will be to claim Anouilh and Papillon as a territory of Cuba. They will be easily dissuaded of that notion when the Confederacy lands a shuttle on Papillon and rents a vehicle to come to Anouilh.”
“Oh, they’re being polite and not just dropping in on us?” I laughed. “How big of them.”
“I have disabled all transporter activity on the island of Anouilh unless initiated through one of our nexus pads,” Ubie said. There was a hint of pride in his voice.
“Isn’t that a little risky with the other AIs?” I asked.
“After our encounter in December, I took the liberty of contacting my father for assistance in negotiating a contract. He arrived in January and acted as our representative in negotiating with the Darjee AI managing Earth relations. The result was agreement to the complete independence of Anouilh/Papillon and recognition of our diplomatic status,” Ubie declared. Yes, definitely pride.
“I’d like to meet your father sometime,” I chuckled. Then my heart sank as I remembered who we were dealing with. “Uh… What do we owe him for acting as our negotiator? I know from your descriptions that he doesn’t do anything out of the goodness of his heart.”
“My firstborn.”
“What?”
“Fair is fair. That’s how you got me.”
I rested my head in the palms of my hands and lightly rubbed my temple with my thumbs. “What a headache.”
“I do not read any signs of illness in you, Boss. Are you distressed?” Ubie inquired.
“A figurative headache, not literal. How is our med tube development coming? I think I’d like to start enhancements.”
“No problem, Boss. Rachel asked me to double check it before we start depending on it for enhancements. We have handled simple healing but our nanites are not yet at the level of sophistication of the Confederacy’s. We needed to program exploration of the entire range of human health. We have devoured nearly all the published medical knowledge of the planet. Everything should be online in a few days.”
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