While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 22

  Back on the ship, Kathryn called a general meeting with the senior staff in the dining hall.

  “I’ve made an arrangement with the aliens,” she announced.  “You are all going home.”  Muted cheers ran through the crowd.  “I won’t be going with you though.  Jaren and I have to stay behind and find a way to rescue our daughter.”

  Concerned murmuring ran through the crowd and Kathryn held her hand up to quiet them.  “I know, I know.  I know many of you would volunteer to stay and help us, and as much we appreciate that, more than we can express,” she acknowledged as Jaren took her hand from his position seated beside her, “we can’t allow it.  You have all demonstrated tremendous bravery and loyalty in coming to this system with us and I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done already.  I have the opportunity to get all of you home now, and I am duty bound to take it.

  “It is time for you all to go home.  You’ll be bringing the secrets of the galaxy back to our people.  The universe has shifted under our seats with recent revelations, and the people back home need to be informed— that is your mission now.  We’re making our final preparations now, and the Bobbins are effecting necessary repairs to the ship as we speak.  You’ll ship out in less than forty-eight hours.”

  The reaction of the crowd was mixed reaction from the crowd as she stepped down, a tension between their relief at going home and an agitation at feeling like they were leaving the job half done.  She could tell that some felt entirely one way or the other, while others seemed to just internalize that tension.

  “Felix…” Kathryn addressed him heavily.

  “No,” he reflexively answered with dread at seeing her expression, “you can’t ask me to —”

  She raised her hand to stop him.  “I can’t ask you to stay.  You’ve got a husband, a life like everyone else here has.  I know you’d stay if I gave you a choice.  I’m sure half of the crew would.  I just can’t let you take that risk for us.  I need you to take command of the ship and bring her home.  You need to get back to Command and tell them everything we’ve learned.  Everything is at stake now.  You ask them nicely if they could spare a couple warships with as many antimatter warheads as they can stuff into them.  They’ll want to take up a defensive posture with them instead, but you have to convince them it’s better for us to take the fight to the enemy first instead of waiting for them to show up at her door.

  She didn’t notice Jaren withdraw his hand from hers.

  Felix let out a slow, heavy sigh.  “Well, you wouldn’t have much use for a human engineer on a Bobbin ship anyways…  It’s Maggie though.  You know I’d stay and help if you’d let me, right?”

  She put her hand on his shoulder.  “Of course.  Thank you.”

  Her oldest friend nodded solemnly and started to undo the lap belt holding him into the chair before he stopped to ask: “What about Ralph?”

  “What about him?”

  “We need him to fly the ship at this point.  Is he coming with us?”

  “The computer core is, but the A.I. is not,” she answered.

  “How’s that?” Felix asked, confused.

  “I asked Bill if he could do us a favour and he agreed.  They separated the A.I. from the core and permanently installed the personality in your robot.”

  “Really?” Felix marveled, looking over at the robot who was tied down to an adjacent seat.  “I guess it never occurred to me that they could do that.”

  “Indeed they can, Felix,” Ralph answered.  “I feel at once both liberated and oddly vulnerable.  Limited perhaps.  Thank you for the body in any case.”

  “Right uh… er well,” Felix stammered, “just take care of it for me then I guess!”

  “Oh forget about that busted old model,” Kathryn tease him.  “Just take this as an excuse to start building a better one now, right?”

  “Hey yeah,” he brightened.  “I guess you’re right!”

  “I would be happy to assist you in that however I can,” Ralph offered.

  “Well that would certainly…” he seemed to become lost in beginning designs for a revised model before he shook his head and snapped back just as quickly.  “Okay everyone,” he called to the rest of the senior staff gathered around the table.  “Let’s get to work then.  We’ve got a lot to do and less than two days to get it all done.”

  “Well, I already know Ralph is with us,” Kathryn noted as she turned to Margaret while everyone else exited their seats and headed for the door, “but I didn’t want to speak for you, Margaret.”

  “To the end of the world and back for Maggie Kat, you know that.” the simulation of an old woman offered in a rare moment of absolute sincerity.  “But I’d like to bring Patricia along.”

  “You know I don’t like you speaking for her like that,” Kathryn said, her face scrunching slightly at her distaste for Margaret still treating her like her servant.  “And she’s not exactly an operational asset, is she?” Kathryn pushed back, knowing at once that as much as she didn’t want her coming along, she wouldn’t be able to prevent it if Margaret insisted.

  “Oh I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises,” Patricia softly offered softly from behind Kathryn, startling her.  She looked back and saw the woman’s mischievous smile, her naturally widened brown eyes coming across as deceptively innocent as ever.  “I feel a personal responsibility.  You asked me to watch after her and she was taken on my watch.  I need the chance to make up for that.  Besides, when you retrieve her you may need someone to look after her while you secure our escape.”

  “Just think of her as my personal assistant,” Margaret offered.  “And I’m certainly coming along.”

  Kathryn slowly let out a heavy sigh.  “Well, I’m not specifically excluding people I guess.  Truth is I’d probably let Felix come too if I didn’t need him to take the ship back and report in.”  She looked up at Patricia.  “You’re right, it will be nice to have someone to watch after her after we rescue her while we are otherwise occupied.”

  Patricia nodded, and Kathryn felt the need to add: “And it wasn’t your fault Pat.  Don’t take that on.”  She immediately regretted addressing her so personally in front of Jaren and didn’t need to see it to feel him flinch uncomfortably at their insinuated intimacy.”

  “So,” Margaret interjected.  “Do we actually have anything resembling a plan here Kat?”

  “Some kind of plan yes,” she offered with a positive note, looking down towards Jaren.  “A chance at least, and it feels lucky just to have even that at this point.  They’re drawing up specific operational plans down on the surface right now.  In fact we need to get back down there pretty soon for the official briefing pretty soon.  Gather what you’ll need for a couple weeks away and meet us in the shuttle in twenty minutes.”

  Margaret and Patricia nodded and pushed themselves in the absence of gravity towards the door.  When they were out of earshot Jaren asked: “Patricia?  Really?”

  Kathryn was surprised.  She knew Patricia made him uncomfortable, but it had been a while since he’d so overtly expressed it.  She had a pang of worry that he suspected something was going on between them, that maybe he’d begun to realize the chemistry between them and the little things it had led to along the way.  The thinly veiled flirty looks, the knowing glances, their quiet moments, that time around Europa…  No, she decided.  No there was no way he knew about that.  She knew things could slip over time though, maybe he had developed a deeper suspicion out of a more general feeling of concern he had trouble articulating.

  “Margaret wouldn’t have let me leave her behind.”  She shrugged, sensing Jaren’s frustration at her inability to control Margaret.  

  “And you tease me about acting like a captain sometimes?” he was genuinely annoyed and tried to play it off as reciprocally lighthearted teasing, but he failed and his genuine frustration bled through.

  “This isn’t a fleet operation here Jaren and she was never formally under my formal command.  I certainly can’t order her around now with a mission like this.”

  Jaren’s expression was sour, but he didn’t push back any further.  Instead he just undid his lap belt and pushed himself out of the room without another word, leaving Kathryn to reflected on how he’d never done that before.  It had always been important to both of them to not leave the room with arguments lingering, to address any small rifts between them immediately before they snowballed into a more insurmountable thing.  It was a dismaying first for him to just walk away frustrated like that.  Maybe he’d just grown tired of having the same disagreement over and over again.  Maybe he was just tired of having it with her.  Either way she just tried to remember it must be just as hard for him to suffer the loss of Maggie and the ambiguity of her status as it was for her.  Not too long ago they would have been grieving together, but now they suddenly felt somehow so far apart.

   

  A couple hours later, Kathryn, Jaren, Margaret, Patricia, and Ralph all found themselves in a room they hadn’t seen the last time they were in the capital building.  It was a cavernous area soaked in green light, the walls, floor, and ceiling all bare emerald shimmering crystal like the exterior of the building.  There were several rows of elevated seats towards one end of the room, and Kathryn figured it probably had something to do with hierarchy, the more important aliens sitting in more elevated positions.  She also figured she could be completely wrong though, inappropriately applying a human cultural convention where it didn’t need to exist.

  The most they had seen of the aliens before was when the first three had boarded their ship and the smattering they’d seen when visiting this facility the first time.  Now they were surrounded by over a hundred of the chest tall aliens excitedly scurrying about.  They were all communicating amongst themselves in their ominous infrasound voice and language which just barely registered for Kathryn.  Barely registering or not, the cacophony was beginning to make her nauseous though, and she imagined it must be all of the subsonic noise agitating her lower brain through her ears.

  “Can you make out anything they’re saying?” Jaren asked Margaret.

  “I can hear everything they’re saying,” she answered with typical petulance, “I just can’t understand a word of it.”

  “They are debating the merits of the operation and the finer details of the plan,” Ralph informed them, leaving Kathryn to wonder why she hadn’t just asked him.

  Kathryn felt a deep penetrating rumbling in her feet through the floor, and all of the aliens began scurrying over to sit in the elevated rows behind them.  She figured the heavy bass note for them to be some sort of notification for something to begin.  She gestured for her teammates to also sit down on the benches where they could find room.

  Though understanding she needn’t be, she felt somewhat embarrassed at her utter inability to pick Bill out or for that matter tell any of them apart.  She hadn’t spent enough time with them to learn enough about what differences in their appearances might distinguish one from the other.

  One of the mirror balls approached her and hung in midair before them, and when an alien rose to speak and formally began the meeting, the sphere translated for them.

  “It has been agreed by the Supreme War Council that %&W#&% and a small force accompanied by the humans, will use the captured enemy shuttle to infiltrate the @#$%^&**&E system by way of tertiary node.  They will conduct a stealth approach and then engage in a hot retreat using the anti-matter weapons provided by the humans.  This information can turn the war, more so the quicker we work to exploit the information.  The human ship will depart in thirty-nine %&Y%*U, and the mission will commence as soon as possible following their departure.”

  And that was that.  An announcement more than a discussion, she supposed.  Or maybe the earlier nausea inducing cacophony had been the deliberations.  Either way the ball then disappeared, and the meeting seemed to abruptly disband.  It was hard to tell if it was just their way or if they were all just busy otherwise engaged in running the war.  

  “Well I guess that’s that then,” Margaret offered, seeming unimpressed.

  One of the aliens approached them with a mirror ball floating behind it.  “It’s settled then,” it said through the device.

  “Bill?” Kathryn asked while suppressing a cringe at the thought of being wrong.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Ah, okay then.  Yes, it seems like we’re going then.  Grand.”

  “We depart in forty hours, would you like to see more of this world and sleep here, or would you prefer to go directly to your new ship?  You could familiarize yourself with it and rest there?”

  “The ship definitely,” Kathryn answered without checking with the others.  “We were warned about staying too long in this planet’s gravity.  Besides, I have a feeling we’re going to need all the time we can get to familiarize ourselves with your ship.  Plus I want to personally oversee the handing over of our weapons.”

  “Very well,” Bill agreed.  “Follow me.”  He began walking away and the team followed behind him.  “We would also like to make an additional request,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.  Your vessels’ propulsion systems are also anti-matter based?”  He posed it as a question, but it was clearly more of a statement.

  “Yes…” she cautiously affirmed, concerned about where he was going with it.

  “We will need to harvest that material as well.”

  “Unacceptable.” Kathryn firmly stated.  “They’re obviously going to need their engines to get back to base.”

  “We are prepared to equip your ship with one of our inertial engines.”

  “One of whatever it is that makes your ships accelerate impossibly fast?” Jaren excitedly piped up to ask.  His people naturally salivated over advanced technology.  Having adopted the Mormon imperative for self-improvement as a more general imperative to develop ever more advanced technology, he naturally jumped at the chance to obtain and study new advanced technology.

  “Not impossible of course,” Bill answered as though Jaren had meant it literally while leading them out of the room.  “But yes.  A similar drive to the ones you have seen in operation.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask about that anyways,” Jaren continued, “how do you do that without liquefying the crew against the rear bulkhead.”

  “They do not operate by direct inertial force,” Bill explained.  “They operate by generating gravity and thus do not generate acceleration forces.”

  “Magic,” Jaren shrugged.  “Got it.  I have no idea what that means.”

  “Regardless,” Bill continued as Kathryn noticed the pink shade of irritation pervade his mirror ball, “our offer?”

  “You want to harvest all of the anti-matter from the ship—“

  “From the shuttles as well,” Bill interrupted to clarify.

  “From the ship and shuttles,” Kathryn acknowledged, “and in exchange you’ll outfit New Horizon II with one of your magic propulsion drives which our engineers can study.”

  “Yes,” Bill said, bordering on impatience with another deeper flash of pink.

  “What will you use that extra antimatter for?”

  “Our mission,” he answered.  “Obviously.”  He led them to a platform like that which had taken them to the roof the day before, and it began lowering them to the ground floor.  Each floor they passed re-materializing above their heads as they passed, a sight Kathryn still hadn’t gotten used to.

  “Your weapons are devastating on impact, but your propulsion, targeting, and navigation system limits how they can be used.  We are going to extract the anti-matter pods from them and pair them to more effective gravity drive missiles.  We wish to do the same with all of your ship’s storage pods as well.  The more warheads we can construct, the better our chances of escape from the alien system with the data.”

  “And Maggie,” Jaren insisted, clarifying their priority.

  “Of course.”

  “It makes sense,” Kathryn considered, looking to Jaren for his input.  They’d been together long enough that she was as effective as she could be in reading his expressions.  He gave her a subtle shrug which said something to the effect of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound…’ with an included ‘it’s a good deal if there’s no catch or unexpected complications’.

  “Very well Bill, agreed.  You will install the new engines and control interfaces for us, and I will have my people prepare the fuel pods for removal.  It shouldn’t take more than an hour to safely release all of them; they’re designed to easily be jettisoned in an emergency.”

  “Excellent.  I will have our engineers begin work on your vessel immediately.”