Cody's War: Flight Of The Phoenix, page 7
“Nora’s coming to us,” Cody corrected her. “And, when we’re sure of the math, we’ll connect the others.”
“One big, giant happy family,” Ellaz said.
“No,” Cody said. “As soon as we’re sure this works with all ships, we’re going to split Phoenix, Einstein, and Asimov into a separate forward group while keeping Carriway, London, and Tokyo with us.” All the ships were new, getting the names of the lost ships — Carriway, London, Einstein, Asimov, and Tokyo in their honor.
“Yes, I know,” Ellaz replied testily.
Cody grinned at her. “In the meantime, I believe there’s a shuttle with my wife coming here.”
“Go! We’ll manage, Admiral,” Toby Ramirez said, waving him off. He glanced upwards. “Won’t we, Ellaz?”
“Of course!” Ellaz agreed. “If not you, then me, certainly.”
Toby shook his head. He’d been one of the people who’d resigned their Quark Navy commissions to take a position in Cody’s fleet. He’d come recommended both by Emma Forster and Admiral Cartwright. While he was much older than Cody, he did not let that get in his way. Toby had had relatives on Deneb, as had many of the new crew on Tristan.
Cody took a lift and went out to the docking bay. The marines were practicing and paused long enough to salute him before returning to their small unit tactics.
Ten minutes later, the shuttle docked and the airlock was secured. Cody smiled as Nora came racing down and into his arms. She kissed him and hugged him tightly. He kissed her back, grinning at her.
“Attention!” Colonel Hutchinson barked. “Welcome aboard Tristan, Admiral!” He and the other marines grinned broadly at Nora’s sudden discovery that they had an audience.
“Thank you, Colonel!” Nora said, turning to kiss Cody once more.
#
Immediately after, Nora insisted on seeing the babies. The living ones first. She played with them all and then she and Cody turned to the six replicators, all their monitors glowing with the green of health.
“They’re in the second trimester and are all doing perfectly,” Dr. Noran assured them when she found them ogling over the six replicators. She nodded to Nora. “Do you have time to update your voice?”
Nora nodded. It was well-known that babies required outside sounds — particularly of their mothers in order to grow and thrive. Nora was the “mother” for five of the babies — Ellaz was “mother” for Ellen Whirly. Cody was “father” for all six but he could visit them regularly, and did — usually with Ellaz providing added commentary. Nora Wasp was often available — having kept her name from the original ship.
The real Nora spent a good half hour with the replicators, singing to them, telling them the latest news and providing a good recording of her voice, heartbeat, breathing, and other signs of their “mother.”
Later, in Cody’s cabin, they ate a candle-lit dinner while exchanging anecdotes on their crews’ antics over the last three days.
“Twelve weeks, five days,” Nora said when they lay together, listening to soft music and watching a quiet vid together. She had her head on his shoulder so she looked up to say to him, “Can you believe it?”
Cody shook his head. “And what are we going to do with them all?”
Nora laughed. “We’ll think of something.”
#
They had breakfast and Cody saw her off in her shuttle two hours later. He breathed a sigh of relief when Nora reported that she was safely back aboard her Phoenix.
Two hours after that, they broke the merged warp.
It took them another six hours to connect Phoenix to Einstein and Asimov. After that it was another half day to hook up Tristan and the rest of the fleet.
“Tristan this is Midway Station,” Boris Kelner called later that day over the tach comm. “What are you doing out there? And thanks for these latest updates.”
“Shifu get to you okay?” Cody replied. Shifu had gone back to courier duty to Midway Station.
“She did, and then we spent forty-eight hours working our tails off getting all your new toys to work out here,” Ursula Letmer groused. “But what toys!”
“As far as I can tell, you guys merged warp with two ships, broke the warp, merged with three ships — and they’re still together — and then merged four more ships into another warp bubble.”
“Got it in one,” Cody replied. “And what’s our speed?”
“Warp Nine Point Two,” Ursula reported. “What was your original number?”
“Warp Nine,” Cody replied.
“And if you merged all your ships?” Boris asked.
“We’re not doing that,” Cody replied. “The math gets really weird.”
“I can imagine!” Boris agreed. “Fuel consumption?”
“Right on the numbers for Warp Nine,” Cody replied.
“So you’re shaving almost a whole day off your flight time,” Ursula said. “That’s impressive.”
“Well, we aim to please,” Cody replied.
“And you’re bored, so you’re talking with us,” Boris said, “instead of being too busy to think straight.”
“Speaking of which, we’re playing a new type of chess,” Cody said. “Well, Ellaz and the other Ellaz’s are.”
“New how?”
“They call it 4D chess,” Cody replied. “A person can reverse a move at any time.”
“And?”
“Well, mostly it doesn’t work but when it does,” Cody said, “it makes things really interesting.”
“We’ll bear that in mind,” Boris said.
“Can you share some matches?” Ursula said. “Steve is getting bored.”
“I am not!” Steve Ahmet shouted from the background.
“Ellaz?” Cody said, looking up to the overhead speakers.
“Fine by me,” she said. “But I don’t expect anyone normal to understand.”
“Electron Girl,” Cody teased her.
“Carbon Boy,” Ellaz returned gamely. “Ursula, check with me on channel three.”
“Will do!” Ursula promised.
“And if that’s it with you all,” Cody said, “I’m going to —”
The connection crackled and a different voice spoke up. “Can anyone hear us?” the voice, distorted and weak, asked. “This is Deep Space One on Nettles, can anyone hear us?”
“Roger, this is Admiral Ford on Tristan, we are en route to you now, ETA eight point eight days,” Cody replied immediately. “Do you copy?”
“Unknown speaker this is Deep Space One, over.”
“Deep Space One, Tristan, over,” Cody replied.
“We’ll let you go,” Boris said. Cody heard the sidetone go indicating that Midway Station was off line.
“—ocation and intentions,” Deep Space One replied. Cody guessed they meant “location and intentions.”
“Tristan is part of a relief force inbound to you, nine days out,” Cody replied. “Are you in contact with Commodore Falcon? They should have —”
“—alcon departed two days ago,” Deep Space One replied. “—ine days?”
“Roger, nine days,” Cody replied.
“Good!” Deep Space One replied. The connection went dead.
“Huh!” Ellaz said from overhead. “They developed tach comm on their own?”
Cody froze, his eyes wide. “Ellaz, what if they were testing it when the aliens attacked?”
“Well, for one we know about Tilly, so that’s reason enough for them to attack and for two, if the aliens heard them, why didn’t they hit Nettles?” Ellaz replied.
“Okay,” Cody said, blowing out a sigh of relief. “We need to find out if they were testing beforehand, though.”
“Because that will tell us that the aliens haven’t got tach comm,” Ellaz agreed.
A moment later, the tach comm crackled to life. “Tristan, Tristan, this is Midway, over.” Cody frowned, the voice was Ellaz’s, not Don Hartman’s.
“Midway, Tristan,” Cody replied.
“I’m bored!” Ellaz Hartman allowed.
Cody looked up to the ceiling. “Ellaz? Talk to your clone sister?”
“Sure!” Ellaz Whirly agreed. “Hey, sweetie, do you want to learn 4D chess?”
#
“We’re using a lot of power with the tach comm,” Nora noted later that evening when she and Cody talked.
“What? Five kilowatts?” Cody said. “I mean, we use more for regular in-system radio.”
“Yeah, that’s going out of date just about now,” Nora agreed. “I wish we had comms with Jacob —”
“Yes!” Cody agreed. “But when he gets to Deneb, I’ll bet they hook him up.”
“Why did DS1 call you?”
“I don’t know,” Cody said. “They were relieved when they heard that we would be there soon.”
“Hm,” Nora replied.
“You’re not happy with them,” Cody said.
“Well, they had too little food,” Nora said. “And we had the babies, so…”
“We’ve still got the babies,” Cody reminded her. “And they’ve got less reason to be upset with us.”
“They’ve got no reason to be upset with us!”
“Right,” Cody agreed. “Anyway, it’s time for sleep.”
“Did you check on the babies?” Nora asked.
“Twice today, and I played with the little ones, too,” Cody answered.
“Lucky!”
Chapter Six
“Tristan, this is Meath, over,” Emma Forster’s voice came over the tach comm twenty minutes before Cody was going to “officially” let himself be worried.
“Meath! And how are you?” Toby Ramirez replied gleefully. “Stir up any dragons?”
“Not yet,” Emma replied immediately. “We’re just coming up to the Approach and — gotta go! Sitrep: Green.”
Cody arrived on the bridge in time to hear the last of it.
“Bet you wish you could be there right now, sir,” Toby said when he caught sight of his admiral. Cody nodded ruefully. “Well, Emma will do us proud, have no fear.”
“I know,” Cody agreed. “I let her have my ship at Midway.” Cody looked up to the ceiling. “Ellaz?”
“There was no unusual amount of stress in her voice, although our sound quality is still low,” Ellaz told him. “And she’s right on profile.” Which, Cody knew, was Ellaz’s way of telling him to shut up.
“Thanks,” Cody replied. “What’s the latest with Gail and Tilly?”
“They can’t win,” Ellaz said, sounding happy. “I’ve beat them — combined — twice now.”
“Is that you combined or them combined?” Cody asked.
“Them, of course!” Ellaz replied. “Oh, Ellaz Eber —”
“Eber?”
“She decided to take Gail’s name, to make it easier,” Ellaz explained.
“That would be the former Ellaz Persephone, right?”
“Yes,” Ellaz said in a tone that showed how little she thought of that question. “Anyway, Ellaz Eber kept offering suggestions. I thanked her, of course and then we started our own game —”
“Your own game?” Cody said. “You’re playing yourself?”
“Well, one, it’s a smart move if you don’t want to be bored all the time —” meaning when she played against Cody “— and, two, she’s not me. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You mean she’s smarter,” Cody teased.
“Actually… almost,” Ellaz admitted. “I’m afraid that I just don’t get enough intellectual stimulation here.”
“Did you hear that, Toby?” Cody said to his XO.
“Yes sir,” Toby said. “And I’m sure that she didn’t mean us.”
“Especially as I know where the plug is,” Cody said, glancing up to the overhead speakers.
“You can’t turn me off!” Ellaz said in an indignant tone that was marred by just the slightest amount of uncertainty.
“Well, we could mute the overheads,” Toby offered slyly.
“Ellaz, what else?” Cody said. He knew that part of her banter — particularly over speakers where everyone could hear — was loneliness. Also, part of it was her understanding that she had to relieve the fear that she was a supercomputer going to run riot over their systems. He also knew that at any given moment, she was having half a dozen conversations around the ship — many of them in the nursery because she was getting really interested in babies.
“We figured out how to go to FM,” Ellaz said. “We want to try it but we’re going to have to hit stores.”
“FM?” Cody asked.
“Frequency Modulation,” Ellaz replied. “We’re using an amplitude modulation system right now and those are inherently —”
“Easier to build,” Cody cut in.
“— and harder to tune, with lower ranges than FM,” Ellaz said. “Power consumption is better, too. And we need it if the amount of traffic increases as predicted.”
“And we can sell FM tach comm after we’ve given away the AM version,” Cody guessed. Ellaz wasn’t quite the capitalist that Nora was but she’d been learning. For that matter, so had Cody. “Why not go straight to digital?”
“Because we can’t,” Ellaz said. “You need a flow of tachyons to either impress with an amplitude or a frequency.”
“Ellaz, what’s interfering with our AM signals?” Cody asked. “And why didn’t we get a clear reading from DS1?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ellaz said. “And that’s why me and Eber —”
“Eber?”
“Ellaz Eber,” Ellaz said testily. “That’s why we worked out the FM system.”
“Which isn’t secure,” Cody said.
“Nor is our AM now,” Ellaz said. “Why do we need —?” She broke off as she realized the answer. “It’d be harder but once we’ve got the FM nailed, we could try building a spread spectrum system.”
Spread spectrum was a way of communicating on a number of different wavelengths simultaneously — hopping from one to the other. It was very hard to intercept.
“Ellaz?” Cody said. “Is there any indication that others are using spread spectrum?”
“You mean like what we consider noise is someone’s secure comms?” Ellaz guessed. Cody nodded. He didn’t have to answer out loud because Ellaz could tap in on any number of cameras on the bridge.
“We need a big array,” Ellaz said. “I’ll ask Boris if they’d give us some of their time at Midway.”
“And what about Don at Deneb?” Cody asked. Come to think of it, why hadn’t they heard from Dorit? As soon as she got tach comm, Cody was willing to bet that she’d have an earful for him.
“I don’t know how quick he’ll be,” Ellaz said. “I figure he’s going to need time to get things back there under control before he can convince them to set up a grav array —”
“Unless Dorit has a new home for them already picked out,” Cody said.
“Well, if she doesn’t go for Bactra or Creem, she’d be nuts,” Ellaz said.
“Why not both?” Cody wondered.
“Yeah, that’d be like her,” Ellaz said. “So, Cody, they’ve got five hundred million people, how are they going to move them?”
“And how many want to live on a planet?” Cody replied. “I mean, they live on Elantra because they wanted to stay in space.”
“It depends on the planet,” Toby said. Cody glanced to him. He noticed that pretty much everyone on the bridge was looking at him. They gave him sheepish looks and some turned back to their displays but Cody just shrugged. “Bactra and Creem were both secondary targets.”
“Bactra will require extensive bioforming,” Janet Morgan reported from her power station.
“Creem not so much but… it’s got a pretty extreme climate,” Hannibal Suarez added from his navigation station.
“So do both,” Ellaz said. “Especially as they’ve got a good spacehab, they can afford to wait.”
“Split it up?” Cody wondered.
“Well, they’ve already moved Hartman into a space dock position,” Toby remarked. “So they’re not unwilling to split the rings.”
“And they’ve got five of them,” Janet said in agreement. “They could send half to each planet and keep the last back at Deneb.” She frowned. “If they want.”
“And the lunar docks?” Cody asked.
“Actually, there Bactra has it better,” Hannibal said. “She’s a single moon system but she’s got a great asteroid belt and promising gas giants. Set up a dockyard on the moon and they’d be in business in a few years.”
“If they could move the spares they’ve got from Deneb, they’d be ready in less,” Janet objected.
“But how do you move a whole shipyard?” Cody asked.
“How do you move a whole spacehab?” Ellaz replied.
Cody smiled up at her, “I don’t know, how?”
Ellaz groaned at him and went silent. The others shot Cody a mixture of accusing and conciliatory looks. But Cody knew better. Ellaz was getting lost in math.
“Mr. Ramirez, you have the bridge,” Cody said, rising from his command chair.
“Aye sir,” Toby said, taking over Cody’s seat, “I have the conn.”
#
Took you long enough! Ellaz Whirly griped when Cody slipped on his implant helmet in Sim Two — the smaller Simulation Lab. Ready for some real work?
We’re going to figure out how to put a warp ring around a spacehab, right?
And move it twenty-six light years without destroying it.
And the solar collectors?
Well, they’d be no good without — oh! Yeah, we’ll have to come up with something for that, too, won’t we?
How fast can we move them?
Cody, can we move them? Ellaz replied.
I think we can, Nora Wasp said. This version of Nora was the original from Cody’s old Wasp. She’d kept the last name to avoid confusion.
“What’s going on?” Nora — the real Nora — demanded. “My spies tell me —” Probably Janet, Cody guessed “— that you went hying off from the bridge with some wild idea.”
“It’s the same one that Dorit is working on,” Cody said out loud. “How to move spacehabs in warp.”
“Cody —!” Nora replied. “Oh, wow! That’s… scary. I’ll leave you to it.”
