Uplift (30 page)

Read Uplift Online

Authors: Ken Pence

Tags: #Science Fiction - Adventure, #Space Opera

Richard Patterson – through his representatives – told the General to build the time acceleration field from the plans first, and gave him lists of the materials he would need. He told the general to stockpile MANY sets of materials, and many workers. He also gave him several supplementary modules on using the acceleration field.

 

            
IAF DRDO Bhavan, New Delhi, India

 

General Arun Singh was in charge of the modernization program research for the Indian Armed Forces. It was a huge task for so large an organization, and this Richard Patterson issue was causing consternation throughout the General Staff…including here. His aide had taken the training module, and its language was in Gujarati for him, and Hindi for others. Evidently the modules adapted for the native dialect of the users. The training clearly showed aliens, and the technology advances were amazing. The fact that China had received similar materials had been reported, and though…surprising…spurred the General Staff to approve the project.

 

Hangar 3, Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Facility

 

I was talking with Carole, and my security team. “We have to get access to Yaloo – the Graloc engineer. I am waiting on the President’s authorization, but I don’t think they will give it to me.”

“We know where he is – we will have to go into lockdown mode again if we do this…” Mel said. “It’s doable. We can go with the invisible mode. We could cut out a wall, but the Army soldiers now have a few of our saber wands they used to cut into the alien ships. Someone could get into any of our facilities with those.”

“I hate waiting…it is so stupid to waste this time.”

Corey spoke up. Troops headed this way. I believe they are coming to arrest you Richard.

What for?

Treason.

Send the president a message…again…explain that all our designs, for everything, will go without any restrictions to China, India, UK, Scandinavia, Russia, Europe…hell…even Australia. Send all designs to anyone with the capability to manufacture a ship…and a nice note.

Several soldiers approached. Patterson noticed they carried two of the saber weapons. Richard held up his palm to his security.

“Richard Patterson. We have orders to place you under arrest for treason,” said one from the group of soldiers.

“Take off your armor, and don’t try anything funny,” said Sergeant Garcia.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t recognize funny sergeant,” said Patterson still angry from the arrogance of Garcia previously with the interview with the Graloc.

The ‘arrest’ was uneventful other than Richard having to talk down his team several times as well as calling off Carole. They searched him fairly well, and handcuffed him behind his back. They marched him to a holding cell.

 

   Lockup – admin building – Wallups Island

 

I was put into a cell next to the Graloc officer. I imagine they wanted us to talk freely since they now had people who could speak Xeeg…we had made new modules. No good deed shall go unpunished. I asked Yaloo to tell me any languages he knew. I was trying to find one that we had not made into a training module. Yaloo started speaking languages a little, and I knew all of them so far. I was surprised he knew so many. I figured he was a bit unusual for any being. He had named three that I knew, and then he said something I had no idea about.

“Wait.” I said, and asked Corey if he understood.

Corey laughed.
He is speaking Traji.

What is that? I asked. Do you know it?

It is like your pig Latin. I know it. Relax – this will not take long.

The pain was brief, but intense.

I turned back to the cell next door, and spoke in my newly acquired Traji. “Do you understand me now?”

The Graloc laughed. “You must have a hyperdimensional personality core. I thought they were a myth. I can see why you can speak so well. How do you have technology that is more advanced than the Xeeg?”

“We have the technology, and we understand it. Any new technology is because we understand the math. We have the same shield as the Horde, but we can project a two-dimensional plane through even that field.”

“I understand how you could cut through the Xeeg ship, but you were damaged by the projected Philon fields. Do you understand how that works?”

“I am not sure. Does it project fields of different frequencies – side-by-side? Then those fields fluctuate frequencies rapidly.”

“Side-by-side. Yes…an interesting way to say it. They are field projectors, and project parallel to each other. It is the Horde’s most powerful weapon except for when they use combined fields to detonate a sun. They project twenty Philon rays together to make a sun unstable when they wish to destroy a civilization.”

“You know how to make that weapon,” Yaloo said.

“I think we could use the same technique with another dimensional field. Explain to me how to do it, and I will try to get you your own ship.”

“You are funny. The Horde will come back in large numbers, and kill us all in six months. They will enjoy killing you after they eat your friends in front of you.”

“If we are in here that long…I hope my message gets to our leaders,” I said while asking Corey if the President got my message. Corey said it did, but there had been no action in 24 hours so I told him to release the information. I informed Corvette, and Carole that they needed to prepare to relocate.

I knew there would be trouble soon. Yaloo said… “You realize that six months is just an estimate. The Horde could come in smaller numbers earlier.”

“Wait…are you telling me they could come sooner, but with fewer of their ships?”

“Yes. They could be here in a month with one hundred of their ships. I was giving you the worse idea first. They sometimes do that if they predict they are superior.”

“Thank you for telling me. Why would they send so few?”

“They may think there is only one ship. If other Xeeg ships arrive, and are not met with more – they will send a smaller fleet.”

I sent the information to Carole through Corvette so they could monitor our sensor grid.

 

No one came to question me. No one came to question me ever. Soldiers fed us regularly, and they would walk us down the hall to let us ‘outside’ to a little walled patio for an hour – once a day. They had orders not to talk to us. I would have gone nuts if I hadn’t had Corey, Corvette, and Carol. I discussed the situation at length with Corey, and we finally decided we should make a personality core copy for Yaloo. My imprisonment wasn’t going anywhere except I did have an idea on how to make a new weapon, but needed fine details not available with the pidgin Traji language. One evening I had Corey make a clone of himself for Yaloo. I told Yaloo what I had done, and where I was going to put it outside.

It was extremely painful to create, but I got the tiny gold colored polygon, and palmed it until I went for my one-hour outside allotment. There was a basketball goal that even Yaloo seemed to like, and it was easy to describe an area in poor light. I left the polygon in shadow there. The next hours seemed to stretch forever as we waited, and then I heard Yaloo cry out in pain. He made pitiful sounds, but no guards came to his aid – worried about him faking an illness I guess.

Two hours later I felt the first thread of a new consciousness. Yaloo. Are you there? I queried in Graloc.

Yes. This is very strange. What do you call the entity in your head? He asked.

I call mine Corey. How about we call yours Cort? He is the son of Corey? What do you think Corvette? Carole?

Sounds good, Carole thought.

Corey interjected.
The Chinese, Russian, Japanese, South Koreans, French, and Indians have already built time acceleration fields. I cannot see through those with no core personality inside. I can see most of their communications. They are using enormous amounts of materials. They are not building one ship – they are building them ten at a time. Even the Scandinavians, and Europeans are building ships. I guess my note worked.

What did you say in the note?

I told them this was the President of the United States, and we secretly wanted them to have all our key designs in case we were destroyed first. I said we would go down fighting beside them as brothers, and fellow humans. We would be able to go anywhere in the universe if we won through this, or we’d all die right here. I told them we would give them any new weapons we were able to develop. I apologized for any of our policies in the past.

I laughed so hard I cried.

Yaloo asked me to explain.

I told him the US, my country, was a subdivision of the Earth that thought we were the best of the elite. I told him we were good, but so were many other countries – each governed a little bit differently.

Yaloo laughed. You really are undeveloped. Savvy savages.

I told Yaloo our recorded history only went back about 6,000 years.

He said his people had been in space over fifteen times that long. He said his species had risen, and fallen over that time, but always held onto space travel. It was the hyperdimensional personality cores that had allowed them to pass information from distant generations to the next, but they were so few as to be mythical.

Corey, and Cort worked with Yaloo, and me, to finalize our design of the Philon field. Carole started building the new projectors. That design helped us firm up details for a new dimensional weapon that projected pairs of Foxtrot fields.

Yaloo asked why we called it Foxtrot, and we explained that we already had Delta, and Echo fields. He laughed, thought something about savages – quickly grunted, and laughed some more.

I asked Corey to give all the other nations access to our system sensor data. I had him tell them all it was from the President of the United States.

I figured nothing was ever going to get me out of here – especially now that we had given away almost all our secrets. I had Corey, and Corvette, put together videos summarizing all that had happened. We put together videos of aliens, and the battles, and how President Leech had joined with all the nations of the world to protect Earth from the Horde. It wasn’t true, but it was for the press. Everyone lies to the press to gain leverage. We even cobbled together video of the President giving a short speech. We put it on the Net, and the world went crazy. We uploaded Trade language to the Net so anyone with a trainer module machine could download Trade. The world could learn a language to speak to any alien, or anyone else. People traveling to other countries could speak Trade with anyone, instead of learning the local language.

The US controlled portion of the Net was shut down for a while (to control the dissemination), but Corey could hack any Earth electronics, and there were satellites that still shared Net control. We started putting up videos of my weapons tests, test firing against BlackArmour, and all the AcuMint, and Wallups Island contributions to the defense. We played up the contributions of Captain Thomas Pates, Admiral Raymond Detweiler, and even General Zhang Wei. We had transcripts where we didn’t have video, and we played up the Chinese contributions, along with all the others. Our new ‘allies’ ate it up – they loved the worldwide, popular support.

We started intercepting communications from foreign governments to the US president commending him, and asking for help from AcuMint, and Richard Patterson. Yaloo explained how to override the controls of the two Gralon ships, when the authorities still didn’t release me.

The overload alarms went off on the two Gralon ships simultaneously. All the scientists, and workers, left what they were doing, and rushed off the ships. The ships went directly to geosynchronous Earth orbit over Wallups Island. I figured that would finally get the government’s attention. The government was not going to get to investigate those ships if they kept them away from my people.

Sergeant Garcia came to my cell, with two soldier escorts, the next morning. He slammed open the cell door, and shouted. “You are trying to make me look like more of a fool!”

“Sergeant. That isn’t possible…” I said. I shouldn’t have baited a lunatic because he nodded to one of the escorts. They stunned me. They beat the ever-living crap out of me. My nanites were the only thing that saved me. I was healed completely in a couple of hours.

The sergeant came back to gloat a few hours later, and saw I was ‘hale, and hearty’ later – it infuriated him. “So you have super nanites. Now I know that I can do this to you twice a day, and it will never show. He pulled a stunner, and ranted at me. “You gave away every advantage we had. We were the top of the heap – now all countries have the same weapons,” he screamed.

I asked Corey if he could help with the nanites, or something, just before Garcia stunned me again. Garcia beat me bloody – breaking my nose, and jaw. Several ribs were broken from his kicks. I bled a lot. Sergeant Garcia cut his knuckles hitting me. That’s how my blood got into him – and some altered nanites of mine. They shut down all his nanites, and began eating his body alive. He crumpled after relocking my cell, and I decided to stay where I was and lie on the floor of the cell. I told Corey to keep me bloody, and only heal the worst of the worst. A new set of guards came back, and saw me lying in a pool of my own blood.

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