Talosian Chronicles 2: Star Dancer Read online

  Ian shrugged. “Since we’re here, wanna go visit your grandkids?”

  Julie grinned. “I thought you’d never ask!”

  Lunar Research and Training Base

  Selene, (Earth’s Moon)

  Sol Sector.

  Getting off the shuttle Alan expected to feel lighter, even though he had no doubt he was in fact on the moon, he felt the same as he did on Earth. It immediately came to him that they had artificial gravity and had adjusted the base to Earth normal gravity for the benefit of those that lived and worked here.

  A young man walked up to him, “Major Carlson?”

  Alan nodded. “I’m Carlson, but I don’t think I’m a Major anything except a pain in the butt!”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you Sir, I’m Tom Wilcox, one of the guys working on the FROG unit. Major Anders told us he was sending a Major Alan Carlson of the Marines up for us. Thank you for coming up here to test this out for us. I know it’s probably getting pretty frantic down there,” Wilcox replied. “If you would follow me, I’ll show you to your quarters before we go to the lab.”

  “Lead on. It’s a lot busier down there, that’s for certain. I expect it’s getting the same way up here though, isn’t it?” Alan asked, making a mental note to corner Ty about the rank.

  Tom shrugged. “It seems a lot busier, but I don’t really see anything happening other than more people moving about faster than they did before we knew about the enemy ship. That’s one of the reasons we asked Major Anders to send one of you guys up here. We’d like to get this into production so we have a few of them for the fight. If we can get the bugs worked out of it, we can get it into production.”

  “I thought all the production up here was set to producing fighters and drones?” Alan asked.

  “Well, it is, but we kinda cheated and built our own production bays. That was really the only way we could get the prototypes built,” Tom admitted.

  “Necessity is the mother of invention, huh?’ Alan said, smiling.

  Tom chuckled. “Something like that. The Base itself is still under construction, so bays like ours are allowed for prototype assembly in order to prevent interruption to the main production runs. If we get it finished, and it’s approved for production, then we would normally hand this off to the production department. However, if this gets approved, we might have to do our own production for a time, which is why we built four bays. We can produce two units at a time as long as the bays have raw material to replicate the parts from.”

  “Is that an issue? I admit I have no idea how replicators work,” Alan asked.

  “Not really, not right now at least. With the construction going on, the drones are producing more raw material than they are using in the construction because they are digging under the surface. They are simply dumping the excess into the shared materials repository. Once the base is finished, though, they’ll have to set up some kind of mining operation somewhere,” Tom said. “Not really my department, so I don’t really know what the plan is, but I’d imagine something like that is in the works somewhere.”

  “This all just seems so fantastic to me. Everywhere I turn there is another wonder to behold. I knew there was a lot of advanced tech, but the sheer volume is a bit overwhelming when you’re faced with it all at once and you’re not used to it,” Alan said.

  “You must be kinda new,” Tom grinned. “But, yeah, it can be a little overwhelming until you get used to it. When I first got a look at everything, I thought I’d died and gone to geek heaven!”

  “Well, I’ve been with the community for a couple of months, but I wasn’t working or living at Talos. In fact, I’ve only been to Talos twice. I haven’t been to the ship yet, and this is my first trip to the moon. By the way, Ty asked me to steal a couple of these if we got them to work.”

  Tom grinned. “I’ll see what we can do. They do work, at least as far as we can test them they do, but we need someone that can fight the unit in order to make damn sure they’ll do what we want them to do.”

  “I haven’t been a combat soldier for a few years, but I think I can still remember what to do,” Alan said grinning slyly.

  “”We asked Ty for a soldier with combat experience,” Tom said concerned.

  Alan smiled at the self-named ‘Geek’. “Oh I have a bit of combat experience. I worked as a fly swatter before I was promoted away from that. I used to work for the NSA, Tom.”

  Tom’s eyebrows shot up. “Black ops? That’ll work. But during testing, try to keep in mind this was designed and built with regular warfare in mind. They don’t really lend themselves to the whole sneaky part of low intensity conflict fights.”

  “Sneaky part?” Alan asked.

  “The drone itself is somewhat large for subtlety. It stands eleven feet nine inches tall,” Tom replied.

  “Tom, low intensity conflict warfare has little to do with being sneaky. What it means is that smaller teams are used to do the fighting as opposed to full armies. Even if multiple teams are used, it’s still low intensity conflict,” Alan replied. “Subtly can be a part of the operations of a team, but not all the time.”

  “Oh, so if there were a couple enemy hover tanks outside harassing the base, instead of dropping the whole Marine detachment on them, we’d send out four of these FROGs. That’s Low Intensity Conflict?” Tom asked.

  “Exactly. You don’t use a nuke to swat a fly, you use a fly swatter,” Alan replied, grinning.

  “...and you were a fly swatter, I get it,” Tom replied, grinning. “You should do just fine for what we need.”

  While they had been talking, they had been walking. Alan was surprised when the young man stopped before a door that was down a hallway just off the main hub. “This will be your quarters during your stay. Nothing fancy, I’m afraid, just basic single quarters.” He opened the door, and gave Alan a quick tour. “Kinda like a hotel room, except the living room, bathroom, bedroom and kitchen are all separate rooms. When you get the chance, be sure to read the safety instruction on the smart sheet.” Tom picked up what looked like a sheet of plastic about the same size as a piece of paper. He showed it to Alan, then set it back on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  Alan dropped his bag on the couch. “Like a studio apartment. I’ll read them later, I get the feeling you want to get going to the lab.”

  “Heh, yeah, we’re in a bit of a hurry since we’re trying to get the units ready for this fight, and the enemy ship will be here in less than twenty-four hours,” Tom replied. “Follow me, and I’ll show you the lab and introduce you to the others.”

  “I’m curious, when the ship was still crashed on the surface, how is it that no one ever discovered it? I know that NASA at the least has been scanning the lunar surface for decades. “They’ve used everything from visible light to x-ray and UV. Even cloaked, the ship should have been detected somehow, but it wasn’t,” Alan asked.

  “No, it wasn’t. You see, before Ian Williams was approached by the AI of the ship, that AI spent most of its time making sure the ship remained undiscovered. Mostly by hacking into the probe doing the scanning and giving it false data, or by setting up a reflector to mimic the surrounding area if the scan was being done from Earth.” Tom explained. “The AI was named Olympus at the time, but now since the ship was recommissioned, the name has been changed to match the ship. Now, we have our own AI, but he still needs to make sure the base doesn’t get detected. I don’t know how it’s going to work when the enemy gets here.” Tom said, frowning. “Maybe we can remain undetected by the enemy too.”

  “You can hope,” Alan replied, not knowing what else to say to the young man. That effectively ended the conversation, but luckily they had also arrived at the ‘lab’.

  It was built on the surface, and was easily the size of a small aircraft hangar. On the far side, two huge robots stood in yellow and black taped off area, next to large airlock doors. From about ten feet all the way to the door they entered from was covered by a plethora of equipment, comp
uters, and other smaller, work stations. On the left wall, two huge gantries stood, with two more of the robots in them. Beside those were two smaller, more man-sized frameworks of what could only be the bays Tom had told Alan about.

  A large jovial looking man walked up to them quickly and offered his hand. But before he could speak, Tom introduced him. “Major, this is Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt, the lead scientist on this project.”

  The big man’s grin grew. “Ja, I’m German.”

  Alan chuckled. “I would hope so! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Heir Doktor.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Heir Major. You will help us by testing the units, ja?” The Man asked.

  “Yep, that’s what I’m here for,” Alan replied as the rest of the ‘crew’ began to gather around, like they hadn’t seen another human in a while.

  “The rest of our team, Major. Doktor Mikael Hiramenfski, Cybernetics.” Dr. Schmidt said waving to the first man he saw as he turned. The smaller man bobbed his head in greeting, “Actually, it’s Michael Hiram,” he grinned.

  “Ja, ja, whatever,” Schmidt said, and moved to the next person. “Doktor Olivia Schmidt-Wilcox. In addition to being my daughter, she is our computer genius,” he said proudly. “Oh, and she’s married to Tom.”

  Alan chuckled and saw Tom cringe out of the corner of his eye. He nodded his head to the pretty young woman.

  “Next there is Jerry Dale, Cybernetics intern working for Doktor Hiramenfski; Alicyn Winterfell, my intern; and Shelly Meyers, who is studying with Olivia. You’ve already met Tom, our resident gopher and mechanic,” Schmidt finished.

  “Actually, I have several degrees and certifications in mechanical engineering, but I think my father-in-law would like me to pursue a doctorate,” Tom replied. “I also handle the weapons systems on the beast.”

  “None of my business, but why don’t you? From the sound it, you already have all the knowledge.” Alan asked.

  Tom shrugged. “I might, just to make him happy. Personally, I feel a person’s knowledge and experience should be more important that any letters behind their name.”

  “Well said!” Doctor Hiram nodded.

  Doctor Schmidt cleared his throat. “”Conspicuous by his absence is Doktor Kenneth Jenkins, Power systems and Physics. Before we get into the qualifications argument, perhaps we should give the Major a briefing on the system he will be testing for us. Olivia?”

  “Major Carlson, if you would come this way, I’ll show you what’s going on here,” Olivia said nodding at her father.

  “Before we split up, could everyone please refer to me as Alan? The title of Major is new to me, and I’m not actually used to it,” Alan said.

  “It is new to you? Are you not a Marine?” Schmidt asked.

  Alan nodded. “I am classified as a Marine, however, combat is not my current job. Before going to work for Ty Anders at Talos, I worked as a troubleshooter for the NSA. Before that, I was one of their field operatives.”

  “We asked for a Marine,” Schmidt said, disapprovingly.

  “With respect, Heir Doktor, I am very much a soldier. However, I have extra training so I could do a special, different job,” Alan explained.

  “He’s a special operations soldier, Daddy,” Olivia said. “You asked Ty for a Marine, he sent you the best one he could find.”

  “Oh!” Schmidt said as he understood what he was being told. ‘Please forgive the foolishness of an old man, Heir Major.”

  Alan waved it off. “No offense was taken, Heir Doktor. But, please, call me Alan.”

  “Ja, thank you Alan.” Schmidt replied as Alan followed Olivia over to a large display unit.

  “Okay Alan, what we have is, what we hope, something that will save a lot of lives. FROG is an acronym that stands for Forward Roving Offensive Guard. By definition, it is a combat drone that is driven by a remote pilot. What we have tried to do is create a drone that can respond to a situation the same way a person would, only with a lot more firepower. The advantage is that if the drone is destroyed, the pilot can simply activate a new drone and get back into the fight.

  That being said, the drone is more heavily armored than a Hornet fighter while bringing slightly more firepower to the fight. As you can see, the drone is equipped with a pulse laser in the left fore-arm and one of the new mass driver guns in the right fore-arm. Instead of hands, we equipped the drone with three ‘fingered’ claws that can conceivably be used to strip the armor off an opponent, or be used to climb and anything else you would normally use a hand for. Do you have any questions so far?” the woman finished.

  “Yes, as I understand the mass driver theory, it is a line of sight weapon, right?” Alan asked.

  Olivia nodded. “Yes, in a vacuum, the range is whatever you set the round destruction distance to be, but in an atmosphere, the range is variable depending on the density of the atmosphere. On Earth, it could be used as a horizon to horizon weapon, but that would be too dangerous, so it has an artificially imposed range of five miles. Any further than that, and the round would turn into unstable plasma.”

  Alan nodded. “What I wanted to know was, what have you got for an indirect weapon system?”

  “Why would it need one?” Tom asked, he had tagged alone so he could answer questions.

  Alan shrugged. “I can think of a couple uses right off the top on my head. Anti-artillery defense, if they were missiles, anti-aircraft defense. But you could also use it to soften up a target as you’re coming in to hit them, or to discourage pursuit.”

  Tom looked thoughtful and nodded in agreement. “You do have a point. Let me see what I can do about it. I don’t know about missiles though, since most of the ones we can get to are either air-to-air or air-to-ground.”

  “I’m by no means an expert, Tom, but it sounds to me like a software issue,” Alan said. “After all, isn’t simply a matter of telling them where to go, and how to get there?”

  “Yeah, it is, and you could be right. I wonder if we can give it a selectable warhead function,” Tom replied, and scooted away to begin typing on a terminal.

  Alan chuckled and turned back to a smiling Olivia.

  “You just made his day,” she said. “Unless there is something major that needs to be rebuilt, his part of this project was finished.”

  “Every weapon system, no matter how well designed, will always have two major flaws, Doctor. The first is the designer that says they have built the perfect weapons system, and the second is the operator that believes them. No matter how well built, there is always room for improvement or something that could have been done better,” Alan said. “It’s my job to find as many of those things as I can and let you know about them. I’m here to try and break your toys, Doctor.”

  “Yeah, and we’re going to try to make sure you can’t,” Olivia replied. Now, how this works is you will need to wear a suit, not unlike a flight suit you would see a fighter pilot wear. Like the new Shadow fighter, you will have to have sensors on your head, so we have included a hood for this suit. They will enable the system to interpret your movements and also give you feedback. In addition to the suit, you will be in a special holographic interface unit that will display a full field of view. If you turn your head, so will the drone. We tried to make the controls as user friendly as we could, so you should have no trouble getting the hang of this system once we hook you up.”

  “Dummy proof control system huh? Good, I think we’ll need that,” Alan replied.

  “Well, we did build this for soldiers, so we only considered our target customers,” Olivia quipped back. “So, what we’re going to do, is pretty much drop you into a simulator until you get the control system figure out, then we’ll connect you to one of the two drones you see over there.” She pointed to one of the big machines.

  “Ty told me to steal a few of these when we finished up,” Alan smiled. “I think he’s looking forward to getting his hands on them.”

  Olivia nodded. “Well, he is the person we thought that would
benefit the most from these. If we can, I’ll send you back with at least two complete systems, but I don’t think we’ll have any back up units for you. Now, let’s get you changed.”

  F.S.S. Star Dancer

  Selene (Earth’s moon) Orbit

  Sol Sector.

  Combat location: Dark Palace

  Ian was pulled from the combat readiness report he was reading by his door chime. “Come,” he called, almost grateful for the interruption.

  I man Ian had never met, but wearing the rank of a Chief Petty Officer, opened the door and entered, followed by Major Getty, Star Dancer’s Marine detachment commander.

  Both men saluted Ian as they came to a stop before his desk. Ian also noticed that they seemed to be wearing some kind of strange armor that almost looked like Talosian Marine Battle suits.

  Ian stuck out his hand to the CPO “Ian Williams.”

  The man shook his hand. Chief Petty Officer Wayford, Sir. The Marine’s Armorer.”

  Ian nodded. “What can I do for you this evening, Gentlemen?”

  “CPO Wayford has created a new armor for us. I’d like you to approve its use, Sir,” Major Getty replied.

  “Have you tested it, Major?” Ian asked.

  “Yes Sir, as extensively as we could. There’s only one more test to give it, and that’s a combat test, Sir. We’d like to give it a try, we think it’ll be a big help,” Getty said.

  “Okay, tell me about it, Wayford,” Ian said.

  “Aye Sir. This version of the armor is roughly the same weight as the previous version, but it has the addition of a stronger shield, as well as a system my mates and I designed that should help keep a few soldiers alive.

  “It has a rather unique automatic sealin’ system that if the suit gets popped the system will automatically seal itself. If somethin’ gets shot off, like an arm or a leg, the suit will not only seal the hole, but it will apply a coating to the wound to stop bleedin’.

  “It’s capable of administerin’ a few drugs, like a pain killer, if’n the squad medic or the medical folks wants it give. Like the armor we had before, it has a distress beacon in it that will switch on after ten seconds if the soldier don’t turn it off first.