Talosian Chronicles 2: Star Dancer (7 page)

“I think we can, Sir. I don’t know how quickly we can do it, but I’m sure we can do something,” Kyle said.

Wade nodded his head. “I think I might be able to adapt the Hammer to the fighter, Sir. But what do you want me to do with the designs I had for the ship?”

“Are they finished?” Ian asked.

“Pretty close, Sir.” Wade replied.

“Do you think it’s close enough that Chief Dommer could move forward with it?” Ian asked.

Wade looked thoughtful. “I’d have to speak to him first, Sir, but it might be.”

Ian touched his comm. “Chief Dommer, please.”

“Dommer here, what can I do for you, Commander?” the man asked.

Ian smiled. “Do you have a few moments to spare for a weapons designer? He has worked up something for the ship and wanted to know if you could make it work.”

“If he doesn’t mind coming down here, I can make time for him,” Dommer replied.

“Thank you Chief, I’ll send him down,” Ian replied. “Command out.”

Ian grinned at Wade. “There you go, He’ll see you as soon as you can get down there. I recommend you go see him before your shuttle returns you to the moon base. Johnsons, I know you just got off a patrol, but I need you all to grab your gear and get on that shuttle. I’m assigning all of you to the moon base for the duration of this project, at least, permanently at the worst.”

“Yes Sir!” the three of them said in unison, making Brittany grin.

“Okay, get moving. Call if you need anything, or if you need something dealt with. Remember, I’ll need trainers for the pilots as well,” Ian said.

Everyone thanked him and filed out the door, in good spirits. Wade to go to Engineering, the Johnsons to go pack, and Miss Benson following them. Ian sighed; on to the next project.

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R
ed Lion Inn,

Norfolk, Virginia.

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I
t took him about two weeks to find out what really happened. There had been some first class rug sweeping going on here. The orders for the fighters had been signed by the commanding general, but all such orders were. The actual instructions for the flight and the authorization of the weaponry had been handled by a Captain Smith in the fighter wing’s intel branch. By the time Alan found this out, Captain Smith had long since gone AWOL.

Colonel Jennifer Williams sent him her findings on an investigation she had stumbled into. Actually the initial work had been done by another young woman in the ship’s flight operations department as a hobby. However, the whole 'missing crude’ idea really got his curiosity going, and he couldn’t wait to get started on it. Deep in his gut, he couldn’t help but wonder if all of these items weren’t related.

He made an initial report to Ty and headed out for Norfolk, VA. That was the U.S. end of the trans-Atlantic pipeline. Once there, he began to dig. He loved this part of his job; he had always preferred the analytical side of his duties when he worked for the NSA. Now, working for Ty and Ian, he was relieved that he wasn’t required to kill anyone. He was, of course, able to defend himself and he could always ask if he came across something that really needed 'special handling'. He honestly believed he would never be asking for that type of assistance.

It didn’t take long before his leads led him into the labyrinth that was the United States intelligence community. It was a tangled quagmire of false leads and dead-ends, but it was obvious to Alan that it had been intentionally made so by someone.

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P
rogress on the moon base was coming along quickly, and that created a lot of excitement in the growing community. However, for Ian, the most exciting thing that happened was the births of two more children. Both Jenny and Beth went into labor at almost the same time, being only a couple of hours apart.

Jenny gave birth to a little boy she named Sean after Ian’s late father, and Beth, who had a little girl, named her Renee after her best friend, and Ian’s late mother. Both children were perfectly healthy, and registered an unusually high compatibility with Talosian gene sequences. Star commented that all four of the Williams’ children could very well be considered Talosian based on their DNA.

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M
oon Base

Selene, (Earth’s moon)

Brittany Benson, with the help of her new team of Kyle and the girls, quickly submitted a refit kit for equipping the existing fleet of Hornet fighters with the new ‘Enigma’ armor she had developed. She included a warning that using the standard magnetic launching method for Hornets may have a loading effect on the armor, and therefore, be dangerous. She cautioned that more testing must be done to determine the amount of energy created and how to dispose of it.

The latest report from Kyle on the progress of the new fighter indicated two major flaws in the current design. One had to do with the amount of energy created by the armor, and the other was still the issues Stephanie was having with the neurological interface.

The report was a little vague about both issues, so Ian decided to call them for a clarification. Stephanie answered the comm.

“Hello Commander! What can we do for you?” she asked.

“Well, I just got the latest report from Kyle, and I was wondering about a couple of the items in there, so I thought I’d call and ask about them,” Ian said. “And you were one of the folks I wanted to talk to. Maybe I could come up with a suggestion or two you didn’t think of to help you out. What exactly are you having trouble with?”

“Well, I did manage to get the interface to work, but I’m having a hard time indexing the profiles,” Steph said.

“What do you mean by indexing the profiles? What are the profiles?” Ian asked.

“Well, I can use a neuro-interface to create a profile for a specific pilot, in a specific ship. However, if that Pilot moves to another ship, a completely new profile has to be made, the computers won’t accept the profile created in the other ship,” she explained.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” Ian asked.

“Well, it takes about an hour or so to record enough information for a profile to be made. Some people it works fast on, others it takes longer,” Stephanie said. “Each of the fighters would have to be assigned to specific pilots for this to work.”

“I don’t have a big issue with that. But what exactly are the benefits of having this system?” Ian asked. “What exactly does it do?”

“Basically it accelerates the pilot’s commands to the ship. When your mind tells your arm to move the flight yolk, this system will tell the ship you are about to move the flight yoke, and start doing it. You will still need to move the flight controls, but the ship will already be responding to the commands. Over-all pilot reaction time is increased by a hundred and five percent, over-all. It’s lower on normal flight operations, and higher during combat,” she explained.

“That’s pretty significant,” Ian said.

“I hope it’s significant enough to save a few lives,” Stephanie said. “If I can get it to work the way I want it too, I hope to be able to use it in other applications as well.”

“Okay, so as I understand this, even though the control systems of the fighters will be identical, the computers refuse to accept a pilot profile created on another machine, correct?”

“Exactly. My plan was to have a profile created in the simulator during training, and save them to a central system. When the pilot was assigned to a fighter, the correct prolife could them be uploaded to the fighter, and off you go.”

“Well, in order to proceed with fighter production, I’m good with having pilots assigned to specific fighters, but you might want to talk to Bill Laskar or one of his folks and see what they can come up with, since this sounds more like a computer issue than a design issue,” Ian suggested. “Just out of curiosity, what other projects did you see this system being used on?”

“One of the bright boys from Talos has thought up a remotely controlled fighting drone that will have the fire power of a heavy tank. There is also the possibility of using this tech as a means to remotely control fighters during a battle as well. That way it reduces the risk to our pilots. When a fighter gets destroyed in combat, they can be immediately assigned another fighter, and sent back into the fight, provided that drone fighter was actually assembled and ready to fly,” Stephanie said. “But we have a long way to go before we get to that point.”

“Okay, I am officially impressed. You are one very smart young lady!” Ian said.

“I’d love to take all the credit, Ian, but a lot of these other ideas are from other people. The remote control drone fighter was actually Tara’s idea,” Steph said. “The ground assault drone is Hal Goodwin’s. I’ve even heard of an underwater attack craft that is being designed as a hobby.”

“Well, like I said, contact Bill Laskar and see if he has someone that can give you a hand with the programming issues. Now, the other issue I wanted to talk about was the power. Did I read that right? Did Kyle say there was too much power?” Ian asked.

“Yeah, but it’s a bit different. I’ll let Brittany fill you in since that’s her baby,” Steph said, and waved at someone off-screen. Brittany must have been close by because she was there in seconds. Stephanie said good-bye, and gave her seat to the new girl.

“Good afternoon, Commander. Stephanie said you wanted to talk to me,” she said by way of greeting.

“Yes, I was reading the report Kyle sent, and it said there was a problem with surplus power?” Ian asked.

Brittany was nodding as he spoke. “Yes, I know it sounds strange, having too much power in a fighter craft. It’s the Enigma armor. It can’t be ‘shut off’ unless it’s in a completely dark room and grounded. There is also the question about what to do with the energy generated in flight. During a fight, the energy is channeled to the weapons, shields and even into the engines, but when it’s all over and it’s time to land, we’ll have a fighter with fully energized armor coming in contact with the ship. If any even touches it, it could kill them. I need to figure out a way to either discharge the armor or stop it from charging in the first place.”

“That would definitely be a bad thing. Have you had any ideas on how to handle it?” Ian asked.

“I’ve sent messages to Chief Dommer as well as Serin Vax, the lead engineer here on the base. I was about to put the issue out to the community at Talos to see what they have to say about it. The problem would apply to the upgrade I suggested to the Hornet fighters too. I’m afraid that until we figure out how to handle it, we can’t proceed with development of the Shadow.”

Ian cocked his head to one side. “I was meaning to ask you folks, why did you pick that name?”

“This fighter will be almost completely invisible to sensors. Remember, any energy that hits it will be absorbed, not reflected. Most scanning methods in use currently rely on reflected emissions of some kind. With the plasma recycling system Kyle built, it’ll even be hard for that to be tracked,” Brittany explained. “The Enigma armor itself is more reflective in appearance than chrome, so while in flight, it should be all but invisible with the naked eye appearing as little more than a distortion in the background of space.”

“Well, I did have a couple of suggestions for Stephanie, but I can’t think of anything to help you out. However, if you would, please hold off on putting it out to the community. If you can get the bugs worked out of this, it might very well end up as the new armor for this ship as well,” Ian said.

“Hmm, that would present a whole new set of issues.
Star Dancer
is really big, and there is no possible way to park it in a dark place like a hanger bay. We would have to find a way to be able to burn off all the energy she would generate on a continuous basis,” Brittany said, looking thoughtful. “Maybe if we fed it into the gravimetric drive systems, and simply took the load of the main reactor...” 

“Well, please keep me posted on what you discover. If either the chief or Engineer Vax don’t get back to you soon, let me know and I’ll call them for you. As I said, we need to get this moving,” Ian said, looking worried. Janet hadn’t contacted him again, but he felt that his time was running out.

Brittany smiled. “Kyle wants to talk to you about that, he’s kind of excited.”

“I could really use some good news about now,” Ian said.

She got up while Ian had been talking and Kyle sat down. “Afternoon, Sir. You said to call if we needed anything?”

Ian nodded. “Yes I did, what can I do for you?”

“Could you send me a few pilots? We are at the point that we can begin their training. No, we still haven’t gotten ready to begin construction yet, but we do have the trainers ready. Remember though, I’ll need them in pairs,” Kyle said. “Of course, they all don’t have to be pilots, the weapons officer doesn’t have to be a pilot, but he does need to be in the trainer with his pilot.”

Ian brightened up. If they were close enough to begin training it would help greatly since once the fighters were actually built, they could get them through the testing phase a lot faster. “How many at a time?” Ian asked.

“I only have five simulators built so far, Sir, so for now, only five teams at a time. I wanted to get the first few simulators built myself before I handed it off to someone else. Once I get the first batch of pilots trained, I’ll know I got all the bugs out, and I can release it to training command,” Kyle explained.

“I’ll get them down there by breakfast tomorrow! Damn good work, Kyle!”

“Thanks you, Sir, I’ll pass that along,” Kyle said, beaming in pride.

“Can the rest of them still hear me Kyle?” Ian asked.

Kyle typed in something on the terminal. “Not anymore, Sir. What’s up?”

“I know you’re doing your best. But if there is any way you can speed this up, please do it. I just can’t shake the feeling we are running out of time. Please don’t think I’m yelling at you, hell you’ve done wonders so far, but I just can’t shake this feeling.”

Kyle nodded. “I understand, Sir. We won’t let you down.”

“I never doubted that, Kyle. I guess I just needed to talk to someone,” Ian said.

Kyle nodded. “You know, Sir. There are a few things going on down here you might not be aware of. With your permission, Sir, I might be able to get a few other items we’re going to need moving at a faster pace. Without telling them what’s going on of course.”